New research has found that a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can dramatically reduce the time needed to ensure that abnormal chest X-rays with critical findings will receive an expert radiologist opinion sooner, cutting the average delay from 11 days to less than 3 days. Chest X-rays are routinely performed to diagnose and monitor a wide range of conditions affecting the lungs, heart, bones, and soft tissues.

Researchers from WMG at the University of Warwick, working with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Hospitals, extracted a dataset of half million anonymised adult chest radiographs (X-rays) and developed an AI system for computer vision that can recognise radiological abnormalities in the X-rays in real-time and suggest how quickly these exams should be reported by a radiologist. In the process of building the AI system, the team developed and validated a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm that can read a radiological report, understand the findings mentioned by the reporting radiologist, and automatically infer the priority level of the exam. By applying this algorithm to the historical exams, the team generated a large volume of training exams that allowed the AI system to understand which visual patterns in X-rays were predictive of their urgency level.

The research team, led by Professor Giovanni Montana, Chair in Data Science in WMG at the University of Warwick, found that normal chest radiographs were detected with a positive predicted value of 73% and a negative predicted value of 99%, and at a speed that meant that abnormal radiographs with critical findings could be prioritised to receive an expert radiologist opinion much sooner than the usual practice.

The results of the research are published today, 22^nd January 2019 in the leading journal Radiology in a paper entitled “Automated triaging and prioritization of adult chest radiographs using deep artificial neural networks.”

WMG’s Professor Giovanni Montana said:

“Artificial intelligence led reporting of imaging could be a valuable tool to improve department workflow and workforce efficiency. The increasing clinical demands on radiology departments worldwide has challenged current service delivery models, particularly in publicly-funded healthcare systems. It is no longer feasible for many Radiology departments with their current staffing level to report all acquired plain radiographs in a timely manner, leading to large backlogs of unreported studies. In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that at any time there are over 300,000 radiographs waiting over 30 days for reporting. The results of this research shows that alternative models of care, such as computer vision algorithms, could be used to greatly reduce delays in the process of identifying and acting on abnormal X-rays - particularly for chest radiographs which account for 40% of all diagnostic imaging performed worldwide. The application of these technologies also extends to many other imaging modalities including MRI and CT.”

ENDS

 Note for Editors:

All historical radiographs in our dataset were formally reported by one of 276 different reporters including board-certified radiologists, trainee radiologists and accredited reporting radiographers. The reports and images used in this study were anonymized prior to modelling thus did not contain any referral information or patient-identifying data.

The WMG centre HVM Catapult team attended the esteemed MIA Energy Efficient Motorsport Conference, earlier this month.

The event showcases leading figures from motorsport, automotive and beyond to discuss current and future technology development, and explores the many opportunities for business growth and success.

At the conference, our Professor Dave Greenwood joined other experts for a lively panel discussion entitled 'What's in it for me? Electric Power in Motorsport and Automotive'.

In the evening, the MIA held its prestigious Business Excellence Awards. WMG sponsored the ‘Export Achievement Award,’ with AP Racing crowned much-deserved winners. The AP Racing team were presented with their award by the CEO of our WMG centre HVM Catapult, Archie MacPherson.

You can read more about MIA events here.

WMG is part of a new £2.5m project to bring together businesses and researchers to help overhaul construction practices in the UK.

The way buildings are constructed has changed relatively little in the last 40 years and has not seen the same increase in productivity or innovation as other industries. This project - called the Transforming Construction Network Plus (N+) - is one of the investments within the Transforming Construction Challenge (TCC), a programme supported by the UK government's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

The overall Transforming Construction Challenge looks to enable the sector to produce safe, healthy, efficient buildings using the latest digital manufacturing techniques. These will be more energy efficient structures, using modern materials and digital design methods to build better buildings for people in the UK. N+ will support the industry to adopt these technologies and help buildings to be constructed 50% faster, 33% cheaper and with half the lifetime carbon emissions.

The purpose of the Transforming Construction Network Plus is to create a new community of researchers and a body of knowledge to inform future construction policy and practice to achieve the TCC’s overarching goals. With £1m to invest in a raft of new research projects over the next two years, the Transforming Construction Network Plus (N+) will mobilise a new movement in the construction community.

N+ will issue two open calls for small research projects, funding up to 20 academic-led and user-inspired projects to generate new research findings. Academics from a range of disciplines will take part and work together with users, as project partners, to develop new ideas for transforming construction.

N+ focuses on supporting research that looks at construction as a production 'system' for built assets that adds value to cities and their infrastructures. Transforming design, construction and operation of buildings is a problem that demands input from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, which is why major, coordinated investments are being made through the TCC.

The research supported through the N+ will focus on the gaps, inter-relationships and under-explored regions of this domain, spanning digital, energy, construction and manufacturing expertise, in line with the expectations of the Industrial Strategy Construction Sector Deal.

The N+ will address a future in which the UK designs, constructs and operates buildings by realising the potential for integrating advanced offsite manufacturing with state-of-the-art digital design and energy generation and storage technologies. By exploring and synthesising knowledge of how people and communities experience and interact with the built environment, N+ will foster new approaches to the provision of inspiring buildings that give rise to greater user satisfaction and productivity.

Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy Janet Godsell comments: “Digital technology provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to connect the fragmented pockets of good practice that exist across construction supply chains, to transform construction.”

Professor Jacqueline Glass, UCL’s Principal Investigator for the N+, said: “With the N+, we have an extraordinary opportunity to tackle longstanding problems which have held back UK construction for decades. We are delighted to be collaborating with researchers from Imperial College London and WMG, University of Warwick to create an integrating agenda for a fragmented industry, by building a new movement of researchers and delivering an evidence-based manifesto for change.”

Jennifer Rubin, ESRC Executive Chair said: “This is innovative, inspiring work that has the potential to impact on the places we work and live in while positioning the UK as an industry leader on the international stage for construction technologies and businesses. ESRC is excited to be working on this project on behalf of UKRI.”

Notes to editors:

The full team are:

· Professor Jacqui Glass, N+ Principal Investigator and Chair of Construction Management, UCL Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management

· Co-Investigator - Professor Andrew Davies, The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London

· Dr Martin Davies, Director of Business and Innovation Partnerships, UCL Innovation and Enterprise

· Professor Jan Godsell, N+ Co-Investigator and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy, WMG, University of Warwick

· Professor Jennifer Whyte, N+ Co-Investigator and Laing O'Rourke/RAEng Chair in Systems Integration, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London

· Co-Investigator - Professor Paul Ruyssevelt, UCL Energy Institute, University College London

The Industrial Strategy sets out a long term plan to boost the productivity and earning power of people throughout the UK. It sets out how we are building a Britain fit for the future – how we will help businesses create better, higher-paying jobs in every part of the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure.

Three WMG Professors have now joined the The Alan Turing Institute as Fellows.

Our Professor of Cyber Systems Engineering Carsten Maple, Professor of Data Science, Giovanni Montana, and Professor of Marketing and Service Systems Irene Ng; are now all part of the prestigious line-up of expert Fellows.

The Alan Turing Institute is a national body championing data science and artificial intelligence research. It was created by five founding universities - Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and the University of Warwick plus the EPSRC, with a further eight new universities – Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Queen Mary University of London, Birmingham, Exeter, Bristol, and Southampton – joining in 2018.

Senior Teaching Fellow, Piotr Klin, was recently crowned ‘Amateur Sportsman of the Year’ at the Coventry Telegraph’s Coventry and Warwickshire Sports Awards 2018.

Piotr is a talented cyclist and coach who has won the Individual Time Trialling at the fourth National Masters, organised an open trial-cycling event in Princethorpe in September and narrowly missed out on taking the Polish National Hour Record. He is currently hard at work preparing a second attempt to break the record.

The 2018 Coventry and Warwickshire Sports Awards celebrate and reward the outstanding achievements and the exceptional successes of sporting stars from across Coventry and Warwickshire.

Researchers from the Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) at WMG are working with healthcare software experts at Dovetail Lab on ‘General Practice of the Future.’

Using Blockchain Technology, our team of Assistant Professor George Despotou, Research Assistant Jill Evans, Professor Theo Arvanitis and PhD student Tim Robbins are developing a digital consent service for the exchange of patient data across electronic health records in an integrated care setting. High levels of encryption allow information to be shared securely with consent, and audit records stored on a “Blockchain” to ensure compliance with information governance rules.

Patients using this consent mechanism will be able to actively control how they share their data, and approve or refuse (case-by-case), from a mobile app.

Coventry City Council, working with the University of Warwick, has taken the unusual step of arranging with the University to have a road named after Professor Lord Bhattacharyya.

The road running past the Prof. Lord Bhattacharyya Building (the home of the National Automotive Innovation Centre) will now be known as Lord Bhattacharyya Way.

Councillor George Duggins, Leader of Coventry City Council said,

“We wanted to celebrate and honour a man who has done much for Coventry – helping to promote the skills of the city around the world.

“We are proud to be recognising a man who has done the same for business and employment and who not only has an amazing drive, commitment and passion for manufacturing – but also for seeing it succeed in our city.

“So, for a man who has put our city on the road to success, made sure we are heading in the right direction, and kept us streets ahead of the competition – we thought this would be the perfect honour.”

WMG, at the University of Warwick, has launched a new Master’s programme with Royal Mail Group which is designed to develop leadership talent in technology based industries. A wide range of Royal Mail Group staff, from all levels of management, are the first participants in this new programme.

Twenty five Royal Mail Group staff enrolled with WMG in September 2018 in a three year development programme which will enable the participants to gain a Leadership and Management focussed MSc from the University of Warwick. The programme is aligned to the Level 7 Senior Leader Master’s Degree Apprenticeship standard.

The three-year part-time programme combines workplace learning with block release study at WMG in eight one-week study modules, each followed by a work-based assignment plus a work-based project. The programme is made up of core and elective modules, giving participants the opportunity to develop specialisations of particular relevance to their current role and future career aspirations. It will lead to a University of Warwick MSc and a Degree Apprenticeship.

A report by WMG Supply Chain researchers, and JDA Software Inc, has revealed that manufacturers are still struggling to effectively integrate and analyse supply chain data, with many still only in the very early stages of digital supply chain adoption.

The report, ‘Delivering the Digital Dividend,’ benchmarked the digital supply chain readiness of 179 European manufacturers, revealing that only 13 per cent currently have a ‘prescriptive’ supply chain (categorised as level 3, out of a scale of 1-4, with 4 being a self-learning autonomous supply chain).

However, crucially, the report does reveal that manufacturers are keen to digitally transform their supply chains, with almost one third (31 per cent) predicting they will have a prescriptive supply chain in place by 2023.

Our Professor Lord Bhattacharyya was honoured to deliver the keynote speech at the prestigious Zienkiewicz Lecture, at Swansea University’s College of Engineering, on Wednesday (28^th November).

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya delivered a lecture entitled: ‘The mobility revolution: How innovation in automotive energy systems, intelligent vehicles and service customisation will transform how we travel,’ before being presented with a commemorative medal from Professor Roger Owen.

This has led to the exciting new EPSRC Tata Steel Prosperity Partnership flagship investment in long-term use-inspired fundamental research, where Swansea University and WMG come together to create a new ‘virtual factory’ for rapid alloy prototyping.

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya began his career as graduate apprentice at Lucas; subsequently gaining an MSc in Engineering Production and Management, and PhD in Engineering Production at the University of Birmingham.