Dong Li, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE), and Konstantinos Kalpakis, associate professor in CSEE, were recently awarded funding from the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) Institute for Clinical and Translational Research to support the development of innovative healthcare technology. Both UMBC researchers are partnering with colleagues at UMB on their projects.

Li’s research aims to develop a reliable method to monitor blood pressure with a smartphone. High blood pressure, or hypertension, affects more than 1.3 billion people globally, and while conventional devices to monitor blood pressure are accurate, they are bulky and impractical in everyday life, Li says. As an affordable and accessible alternative, Li is testing if a smartphone, outfitted with ultrasound sensors to measure blood flow and using the built-in microphone to record heart sounds, could deliver reliable readings. Li’s partnership with UMB will allow the team to conduct clinical trials, with both healthy individuals and those with hypertension, to rigorously evaluate the system’s accuracy and effectiveness.

In a separate project, Kalpakis and his colleagues are developing a new approach to help trauma physicians make better-informed treatment decisions quickly. The team is working on a machine-learning framework that can help ER doctors predict medical outcomes, such as which patients will experience severe complications from trauma such as hemorrhaging, and what their blood transfusion needs may be. Unlike other machine learning models, the new approach can update over time and deliver measures of uncertainty, helping clinicians place more trust in the model’s guidance. 

“These projects highlight how interdisciplinary collaboration between UMBC and the University of Maryland School of Medicine can drive innovations in medical care and improve public health,” Li says. “I’m excited and proud to take this work forward.”

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