Kidney transplant network to get boost from AI

Here’s a brilliant application for artificial intelligence: streamlining the way doctors match people who need kidney transplants with donor kidneys. Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology are deploying AI to improve the kidney transplant network to speed up the system and improve patient outcomes.

The Missouri S&T team is working with transplant experts at Saint Louis University Hospital to get a handle on the massive amounts of data involved with kidney transplants. It’s a big challenge because tens of thousands of people are always waiting for a kidney and matches aren’t always easy to make.

The research is still in an early stage, but a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation is getting the ball rolling toward finding the optimal data architecture for an AI model.