The University of Florida has been awarded $3.6 million of a $23.5 million multicenter grant for a four-year data-generation project that is unprecedented in its scope, aimed at building an infrastructure for artificial intelligence in critical care and advancing artificial intelligence in ways that improve patients’ ability to recover from life-threatening illnesses.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Bridge to Artificial Intelligence, or Bridge2AI program, this project creates a network of university health systems that will support a comprehensive repository of data for AI research from more than 100,000 critically ill patients. The patients’ data will be made anonymous.

Although the project’s highlight will be the 100,000-patient data set, key aspects of the project include AI workforce training events, a set of standards for ethical use of AI in critical care, publicly available AI tutorials and guidelines for a collaborative approach to medical AI research.

“This project is a huge win for UF AI research and will put us on the map for biomedical AI,” said Azra Bihorac, M.D., M.S., FCCM, the senior associate dean for research affairs at the College of Medicine and co-director of UF’s Intelligent Critical Care Center, or IC3. “The success of our UF team builds on the investment of UF Health and the UF College of Medicine in the digitization of clinical infrastructure and the generation, integration and standardization of medical data for both clinical and research use.”

UF Health is launching a statewide network of mobile stroke treatment units — specialized ambulances equipped to speed diagnosis and treatment.

The first new mobile stroke unit will be housed in Gainesville and is expected to be deployed by July 2023. Soon after, UF Health will add an additional unit in Central Florida in The Villages, and, later, mobile stroke units in Jacksonville and Palm Beach County. Only 20 mobile stroke programs are currently operational nationwide.

UF Health’s mobile stroke units will include a diagnostic CT scanner, clot-busting drugs such as tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, medications given intravenously to lower high blood pressure, medications used to reverse the effects of bleeding inside the brain, and telemedicine equipment. Ambulances will be staffed by a team that includes a stroke-trained health provider, a CT technician, an EMT driver and paramedic, as well as a stroke neurologist (available via telemedicine).

By deploying to the patient, the team can begin treatment while in transit to the nearest available stroke center, saving critical moments to reduce long-term disability from the stroke.

Each February, millions of people around the U.S. celebrate Black History Month, a tribute to past and current generations of African Americans and their contributions to the nation.

At the University of Florida College of Medicine, Black scientists and health care providers have made a lasting impact. Read about the stories of three African American students, alumni and faculty from our M.D., PA and Ph.D. concentrations at the link below.