Please join us for a UW Data Science Seminar featuring UW Associate Professor of Ob/Gyn Aparna Ramanathan on Thursday, January 29th from 4:30 to 5:20 p.m. PT. The seminar will be held in IEB G109.

“Detection of Early Warning Signals regarding Safety Concerns of Implantable Medical Devices”

Abstract: Shortcomings in the American process for safety monitoring of new medical devices has led to the injury of hundreds of thousands of patients. Surveillance currently relies primarily on reports of adverse events submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by manufacturers, making concerns raised by patients virtually invisible. There is mounting evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques could be leveraged to monitor social media and develop a surveillance system that would alert key stakeholders to device-related failures or adverse events as they are unfolding. Our preliminary study of social media related to one known problematic device has shown potential for discovering of early warning signals of future device failure in social media data. In our preliminary study, we were able to detect, through online discussions on Reddit, the lead-up to failure of Essure® – a gynecologic device for permanent birth control that was associated with numerous harmful side effects after introduction and was withdrawn from the market by the manufacturer in 2018.

Speaker Bio: Aparna Ramanathan is an Associate Professor of Ob/Gyn at UW with a research focus in medical device development – her work on device development led her to study of regulatory processes and device safety.  She was fortunate last year to be paired with Dr. June Yang and Dr. Spencer Wood of the eScience Institute through their Accelerator program for further investigation of this problem through data science.