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Penn State National Science Foundation Center for Health Organization Transformation
(Penn State CHOT) - An Industry-University Cooperative Research Center

February 2019

Penn State CHOT Research Highlights

Penn State CHOT Scholars are conducting research to find
advancements in public health. Here are some highlights on
their projects:
Associate Professor of Supply Chain & Information Systems Hui Zhao, Ph.D. candidate
Liang (Leon) Xu, and undergraduate Eric Wang are exploring different treatments of
opioid misuse and their efficacy.

Each day, more than 115 Americans die due to overdosing on opioids. Opioid misuse has
become a national crisis that devastates U.S. public health, communities, and labor forces. To
combat the opioid crisis, the Substance Abuse Treatment Services (SATS) facilities across the
country are providing the very much needed treatments and counseling to opioid misusers. The
objective of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the different opioid-related treatments
provided by these facilities by analyzing the national survey data on SATS facilities, opioid-
related hospitalization, and mortality. Their preliminary analysis suggests that the more SATS
facilities available in a state would lead to a less mortality rate in the state. Right now, Zhao, Xu,
and Wang are conducting more analyses to calibrate and quantify this effect.
Dr. Steven Schiff, medical student Mallory Peterson, and two undergraduates, Jiaming
Chai and Wendy Wang, are executing a study concerning ultrasounds and central
nervous system infections.

The research team has been working on processing approximately 600 neonatal neural
ultrasound scan sets to create a database of homogeneous sets that can be analyzed by a
convolutional neural network. These sets each describe a neonate from Uganda with a central
nervous system infection. Currently, they are working on sequencing the genomes of the
pathogens behind these infections in order to label their ultrasound sets appropriately. In the
future, Dr. Schiff, Peterson, Chai, and Wang plan to pre-process their scan sets by using
techniques such as de-hazing and removal of features that are not of interest. Once this is
complete, they will be able to train a neural network to identify an infectious agent simply by
analyzing a set of ultrasound scans. The research team is also working on using similar
algorithms to determine definitive volume curves from an National Institutes of Health's MRI
database in order to provide an invaluable health care tool for surgeons, pediatricians, and
researchers.

Upcoming Event

Spring 2019 IAB Meeting

Hosted by Penn State & Siemens Healthineers
Date: Wed., April 3, 2019 and Thurs., April 4, 2019
Location: Penn State Great Valley Campus, Auditorium
30 Swedesford Road, Malvern, PA 19355

More information about the event can be found here.

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