By: Erin Vollick
9 Oct, 2023
Russell Greiner, Amii: AI that makes precision medicine more precise
October 9, 2023
Russ Greiner, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii
When a loved one is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, they and their families are faced with decisions that all too often must be navigated without clear information about how long they might live or what could meaningfully improve their quality of life. Russell Greiner, Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Amii, is working on machine learning AI tools that can help guide patients and their caregivers, by more accurately predicting survival and advancing better care strategies.
“CIFAR has helped me directly by funding my students and research. But more importantly, it has created an ecosystem that has helped AI flourish in Canada.”
Russ Greiner, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii
From screening to diagnostics to prognostics, Greiner is building AI tools that advance personalized and precision medicine. With its specialized algorithm, his survival prediction tool could better predict recovery rates, chart personalized treatment plans, and support hospital administrators in important resource decisions such as when to move a patient to hospice care.
Greiner’s liver transplant survival prediction tool harnesses machine learning to develop more accurate predictions for transplant recipients, ensuring that these precious gifts of life receive the greatest chances of success. The screening tool is now freely available and being used by medical practitioners in Alberta and beyond.
Working with industry partner Metabolomic Technologies Inc., Greiner has also developed a non-invasive urine screening test for colorectal cancers. Using a collection method that is easier to use, the machine learning algorithm test increases the convenience of cancer and pre-cancerous screenings, which could further reduce the need for unnecessary, costly, invasive colonoscopies. Having received very positive pre-clinical results, the team is moving towards clinical trials for regulatory approvals.
Funded by CIFAR as a postdoctoral fellow himself in the late 1980s, Greiner has now come full circle. “CIFAR has helped me directly by funding my students and research. But more importantly, it has created an ecosystem that has helped AI flourish in Canada.”