Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah nominated for Data Innovation Award

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah has been nominated for a 

Research Australia award

Research Australia have published the select list of nominees for this year's annual health and medical research awards. See Monash's full list here.

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah from Central Clinical School has been nominated by Prof Geoff Webb, Monash University & A/Prof Sharon Chenn, ICPMR, Westmead Hospital for her work on invasive fungal infections (IFIs), which are rare, neglected diseases that target people with low immunity such as cancer patients and people undergoing organ transplants.

Dr Ananda-Rajah and her team are using artificial intelligence software that uses existing radiology images and notes from the hospital to detect and manage IFIs. see below for detail about the project.

Invasive fungal infections (IFIs) are rare, neglected diseases that target people with low immunity such as cancer patients and people undergoing organ transplants.  They have a high mortality rate (40-90%), decreased cancer cure rates and cost hospitals millions in antifungal medications.

Current practice in hospitals to detect and manage IFIs involves reviewing radiology, coding data, medical records, antifungal drug prescriptions and microbiology results. This manual approach is resource intensive, error prone and difficult to standardise. FungalAi overcomes these barriers by automating this process using artificial intelligence to analyse radiology reports and images to detect and manage IFIs more quickly and accurately.

Dr Ananda-Rajah is a practising clinician in infectious diseases and general medicine at the Alfred Hospital. She leads a multidisciplinary team from medicine, language technology, computer vision and implementation science to tackle the tragic and costly side effects of Invasive Fungal Infections (IFIs).

The team has developed artificial intelligence software that uses existing radiology images and notes from the hospital to detect and manage IFIs.

FungalAi is looking to revolutionise the diagnosis and management of IFIs. This smart technology can scan and detect IFIs 24/7, supplying much needed relief and support to hospital workers worldwide. Not only does the app provide real time detection of IFIs but it provides physicians with the data to ensure they are administering the correct medicine for the specific infection found. 

FungalAi has the benefit of being clinician led. It is developed alongside antifungal drug management systems that it will support and use machine learning to minimise the manual approach to case finding. MRFF funding is enabling clinicians to pursue research that is informed by their day-to-day practice and experience. The result is health innovation that is tailored for use in clinical settings.

Being embedded in healthcare has also eased FungalAi’s translation to other areas of the hospital including the standardisation of IFI reporting in clinical trials and radiologist decision support. A more consistent approach is less likely to miss patients with fungal infections which is important for clinical and research programs. 

Traditionally, due to the complexity of diagnosing IFIs, hospital staff would need to restrict their surveillance to the most high-risk groups. This technology has the potential to detect IFIs at the population level. This means the software can scan a wide range of patients with different types of cancer in order to improve fungal detection, diagnosis and outcomes. Early detection and better treatment are crucial to reducing the mortality rate and lessening the burden on patients and hospitals.

FungalAi is currently the subject of a multicentre study evaluating its effectiveness for detection of IFIs on a diverse group of patients across 7 Australian hospitals and a major centre in Singapore. The validation of the technology is being completed before it is formally implemented in hospitals. 

This project is also an important milestone in the commercialisation of Australian innovation. There is already interest from other industry groups to develop ‘spin-off’ software of FungalAi. These next steps will be important for sustainability and for growing AI capability in Australia.

Dr Ananda-Rajah says, "This nomination is a great honour, and a wonderful recognition of the growing value of AI in medical research and practice."