Better cardiovascular care through AI
Collin Stultz, a 2023-2024 MIT Jameel Clinic principal investigator, tells MIT Spectrum in their Spring 2024 issue about how patients with heart disease can be helped by applying machine learning techniques to cardiovascular medicine.
"Machine learning will bring more equitable and fairer care for everyone,” he says. “What we want to do, at a high level, is move the hospital to the home setting. If we can help each patient, regardless of their background or where they reside, get the same level of care that a patient at a tertiary care centre like MGH receives, then we will be closer to realising excellent and unbiased care for all patients with cardiovascular disease.”
Although Collin Stultz, MD, loved math throughout high school and his undergraduate years, he headed to Harvard Medical School rather than pursuing pure mathematics, he jokes, to please his parents.
Two years later, he began working toward a PhD in biophysics, completing his medical degree and doctorate in the same year. During his internship, residency, and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Stultz was drawn to cardiology because, he says, “it’s a very evidence-based field.”
Stultz, now the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in medical engineering and science and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, joined MIT’s faculty in 2004 and focused his early research on physical chemistry, investigating the proteins involved in various diseases. He showed, for instance, that when collagen—a protein linked to atherosclerosis—degrades and changes shape, it can lead to fatal heart attacks.