Student Research Projects

A data mining project using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset

Summer of Research project by Josh Atwal, supervised by Dr. Jichao Zhao (University of Auckland). Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained heart rhythm disturbance. At present, 25% of the New Zealand population who are 40 years old or ...
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A Prediction Algorithm for Familial Hypercholesterolaemia in New Zealand

Summer of Research project by Nick James, supervised by Dr. Patrick Gladding (University of Auckland). Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is a genetic condition which causes an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death (3-4 times the risk of early death) ...
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An online system for answering medical questions

Summer of Research project by Qiming Bao, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Jiamou Liu (University of Auckland). As demand for doctors increases, patients may be able to decrease pressure on the health system and save themselves money by getting ...
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App Analytics and the Questions They Answer

Summer of Research project by Tuan Dung Ngo, AUT, supervised by Associate Professor Robyn Whittaker (University of Auckland and Waitemata DHB). Mobile technology has developed rapidly over the last few years. Almost everyone you know has a smartphone. You might even ...
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Application of deep learning techniques in a de-identification system

Summer of Research project by Yicheng Shi, University of Auckland, supervised by Quentin Thurier (Orion Health). Clinical data, collected by healthcare providers when treating patients, is incredibly valuable for medical research – but good data is hard to get. This ...
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Can a Fitness Tracker Detect Diabetes?

Summer of Research project by Mohsin Baig, AUT, supervised by Dr Farhaan Mirza. The cost of long-term conditions (LTCs), any ongoing health condition that cannot be cured, is becoming a major burden on healthcare providers. In many countries, these costs ...
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Chronic Pain and Your Brain

Summer of Research project by Nicola Kluger, AUT, supervised by Dr Andrea Burri. Chronic pain (any pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks) can be debilitating. As you can imagine, chronic pain is a rather broad term. It can have ...
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Clinical abbreviations detection and normalisation

Summer of Research project by Enno Huang, University of Auckland, supervised by Edmond Zhang (Orion Health and Precision Driven Health) and Yun Sing Koh (University of Auckland). “2 yo F here for an RPE w/a recent URI who c/o ear ...
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De-identification of GP e-referrals for a deep-learning based triage decision support tool

Summer of Research project by Nick James, (University of Auckland), supervised by Dr Edmond Zhang (Orion Health) and Dr Patrick Gladding (University of Auckland). In New Zealand, private medical information cannot be used for research except when it directly relates ...
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Deep learning-based Melanoma prediction from skin images

Summer of Research project by Sivaram Manoharan, supervised by Bernhard Pfahringer, University of Auckland. Melanoma is an extremely dangerous type of skin cancer most commonly caused by exposure to UV light. The highest incidence rate of Melanoma is in Australia ...
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Effects of resourcing on timely and effective care of patients in a lymphoedema clinic

Summer of Research project by Ellen Gibbs, AUT University, supervised by Sarah Marshall (AUT University). Computer models can help design specialist health clinics, giving patients the better care and using clinic resources efficiently. Ellen Gibbs created a simulation for a ...
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Evaluating Biomedical Word Embeddings

Summer of Research project by student Aaron Zhang (The University of Auckland), supervised by Dr Edmond Zhang (Orion Health). It takes time and money to train specialist medical algorithms, and medical-specific data is hard to obtain for research, but the ...
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Feature importance for adverse drug event named entity recognition

Summer of Research project by Hamish Huggard, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Edmond Zhang (Precision Driven Health and Orion Health). Automatically identifying drug names, dosages and effects in health records could help researchers find relationships between certain medications and ...
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Financial Evaluation of EDDI (Early Detection Decision Information)

Summer of Research project by James Zhang, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Michael O’Sullivan Jnr (University of Auckland). New software could flag issues early during operations, helping surgeons and anaesthetists intervene before serious complications arise. We need to find ...
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Genes and Drugs

Summer of Research project by Kate Kilpatrick, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Patrick Gladding. Huge advances have been made in cardiovascular medicine in recent decades, but the application of some of these advances in real world practice has been ...
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Growing a Generation

Summer of Research project by Laura McCrae, University of Auckland, supervised by Associate Professor Robyn Whittaker. Growth monitoring is an essential part of assessing children’s health care. Tracking how a child is growing can provide awareness of nutritional issues or other ...
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Hunting Down Hidden Healthcare Data

Summer of Research project by Kieran McCullough, University of Auckland, supervised by Associate Professor Robyn Whittaker. Since the implementation of the New Zealand National Health Index in 1993, many different electronic health systems have popped up around the country. In ...
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Improved planning for the scheduling of surgeries

Summer of Research project by Thomas Adams, supervised by Dr Michael O’Sullivan, University of Auckland. To better allocate resources and plan for surgeries, Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB) require data-driven analysis of their surgical scheduling. This will help them ...
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Interpretable image-based machine learning models in healthcare

Summer of Research project by Harper Shen, University of Auckland, supervised by Quentin Thurier (Orion Health) and Dr Yun Sing Koh (University of Auckland). Neural networks can be great at solving problems, but they sometimes give wrong answers. Would you ...
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Knowledge is Power

Summer of Research project by Seyedjamal (Jamal) Zolhavarieh, AUT, supervised by Dave Parry. While the discovery of new health information is always a good thing, it can lead to difficulties. Doctors and specialists are required to actively ensure they are ...
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Machine Learning: The Heart of Precision Medicine

Summer of Research project by Nicholas James, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Patrick Gladding. You’ve seen it happen in movies I’m sure. A main character is flat lining and the doctor yells ‘CLEAR!’ before bringing down the paddles and ...
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Machine readable clinical guidelines and pathways

Summer of Research project by David Bassett, supervised by Dr. Patrick Gladding (University of Auckland) There has recently been rapid growth in the use of clinical guidelines and pathways for the assessment, diagnosis and management of medical conditions. These guidelines ...
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Meet Mandy – An Intelligent and Interactive Medicare System

Summer of Research project by Lin Ni, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Jiamou Liu. We’ve all been there – stuck in a waiting room for hours, only to be told by the doctor to go home and rest for ...
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Mobile Application for Patient Communication

Summer of Research project by Hiten Karamchandani, AUT, supervised by Dr Muhammad Asif Naeem and Dr Farhaan Mirza. It’s good news when a patient is discharged from hospital, but things can often go wrong in the final moments of their stay. The ...
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Picking up the Pace of Precision Medicine

Summer of Research project by Kevin Howe, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Patrick Gladding. It’s incredible how advanced medical technology has become. Many illnesses that were previously fatal are now treated with ease. Even something as serious as heart ...
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Summer of Research

While most of us like to kick back on summer days, this year a group of dedicated students stepped it up and spent the summer season researching and working on projects at the forefront of developing precision medicine. These young ...
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Summer of Research 2016/2017

Student Projects Successful in 2016-2017 The Precision Driven Health partnership had an exciting summer of research in 2016-2017 with 11 students completing precision medicine projects. The students, from the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology, had backgrounds mainly ...
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Survey of machine learning-based approaches to de-identification of medical documents

Summer of Research project by Vithya Yogarajan, supervised by Michael Mayo, University of Waikato. Protecting patient confidentiality while using medical data from electronic health records (EHRs) for research is crucial. De-identification of EHR data provides the opportunity to use the ...
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Using Council Data to Investigate Health Outcomes

Summer of Research project by Kaito Goto, University of Auckland, supervised by Quentin Thurier and Dan Exeter (Precision Driven Health and Orion Health). Auckland Council has a range of geospatial and infrastructure data available, which could potentially be linked with ...
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Using modelling to improve efficiency at Dargaville Medical Centre

Summer of Research project by Lucy McSweeney, University of Auckland, supervised by Dr Michael O’Sullivan Jnr (University of Auckland) Creating a model of how patients and staff use and provide services at a health clinic can help that clinic operate ...
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