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<\/h3>\nNationally known as a health disparities researcher, thought leader, and technologist, Azizi Seixas, PhD, was recently honored by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as one of 10 U.S. Education Champions<\/a> <\/span>in their inaugural class at IMAGINE 2022. The AWS Education Champions community<\/a><\/span> recognizes, celebrates, and supports individuals that embody and advocate for AWS Education\u2019s mission of accelerating digital transformation of education with cloud computing<\/strong>. These pioneers will inspire others to think big when looking at how to improve education and accelerate research. The Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) congratulates and celebrates with Dr. Seixas!<\/p>\n The individuals selected as “Education Champions” demonstrated innovative uses of AWS services to profoundly shape the experience of learners, educators, researchers, administrators, and more. In addition, they were honored for sharing their experiences with services, solutions, and best practices for the use of AWS in education<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 Along with recognition, AWS Education Champions receive professional development and thought leadership opportunities, increased visibility in a vast network of peers and other education leaders, and access to travel grants to attend industry events to present their experiences and lessons learned. They also are invited to present at AWS conferences and events to share their initiatives ranging from turning data into actionable insights to support student success to developing new ways to test medical treatments virtually.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an honor to be recognized by AWS for driving digital transformation with innovative approaches across the educational landscape,\u201d Dr. Seixas said. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s not about the next cool technology\u2014it\u2019s about finding answers to health issues and educating the next generation of researchers.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Seixas has spent many years studying how to address challenging health disparities in underserved neighborhoods throughout the country. Now, in his role as Director of Population Health Informatics<\/a><\/span> at IDSC is deploying advanced technology to find new strategies for delivering personalized medicine and improving population health. \u201cSolving healthcare challenges takes continuous streams of good data, powerful analytics, and a deep understanding of how to effect sustainable behavior change across the four pillars of health: sleep, physical activity, diet and nutrition, and stress management,\u201d said Seixas, who is a Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences<\/a><\/span> at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine<\/a><\/span>. \u201cBig data is not a panacea, but it provides perspective and depth on health issues, and how we can solve them,\u201d he added. \u201cFor instance, we can go beyond the usual suspects like high blood pressure and study things like heart rate variability when sleeping. Analyzing this data can help us find new causes, risk factors and protective strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n Seixas has written more than 150 high-impact publications, book chapters, and conference presentations, and was recently voted one of the top 100 most inspiring Black Scientists in America<\/a><\/span> by Cell Press. He has taken a disruptive approach to research by connecting personalized individual care with population health in a community. \u201cWhen studying a health issue, we first need to describe it and determine its attributions,\u201d he said. \u201cThen we can classify the issue and try to forecast to see if we can predict how these variables will relate over time. Then we explain the cause and ask why a group of people are most burdened by a health condition. Then, we go back to personalization to look at the individual and try to optimize those findings for a larger population.\u201d<\/p>\n In yet another role as Director of The Media and Innovation Lab<\/a><\/span> (MIL) at the Miller School, Seixas is looking at a wide range of issues from precision medicine to population health. \u201cMost of health and well-being is outside the confines of healthcare system, so we need a wide approach to tackle the vexing issues,\u201d he said. \u201cTechnology is changing how we communicate at a time when rising cost of living, stress levels, and social demands pose challenges to individuals and communities,\u201d he said. \u201cOur goal is to be a regional, national, and global leader in digital health technology and innovation, with a special emphasis on making these solutions accessible to all.<\/p>\n Seixas will be examining digital health issues from five perspectives:<\/p>\n \u2022 Education<\/strong>\u2014Creating a culture of innovation in academic medicine for clinicians and scientists. \u201cWe know our greatest covenant as scientists and clinicians is to serve the public,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make accurate health-related content accessible to individuals so they can make well-informed decisions for themselves and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n One of Seixas\u2019 priorities this fall is the “digital twin<\/span><\/a>” initiative, creating an individual\u2019s digital health proxy to test therapies before being used on that patient. This \u201cMILBox<\/span><\/a>\u201d strategy includes a physical box sent to participants\u2019 homes with wearable devices and sensors based on an individual\u2019s health screening. Data is collected over seven days and transmitted via an app on the user\u2019s smartphone to the cloud, where an artificial intelligence algorithm will evaluate various treatment options.<\/p>\n \u201cThe digital twin program is an opportunity to revolutionize how data is captured and utilized to better inform treatment teams about the health and well-being of their patients,\u201d Seixas said. \u201cOur approach to obtaining holistic, longitudinal data from diverse population groups is designed to overcome the gaps and data drop-offs that have limited these kinds of efforts until now.\u201d<\/p>\n Emphasizing the value of IDSC resources in understanding individuals\u2019 personal health issues, Seixas said, \u201cDigital twins will serve as models, demonstrating the positive impact of changes in behaviors, therapies, and other health interventions. At its core, precision medicine is personal medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cover Story Nationally known as a health disparities researcher, thought leader, and technologist, Azizi Seixas, PhD, was recently honored by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as one of 10 U.S. Education Champions in their inaugural class at IMAGINE 2022. The AWS Education Champions community recognizes, celebrates, and supports individuals that embody and advocate for AWS Education\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,47,634],"tags":[641,642,644,643],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover-story","category-digital-health","category-fall-2022","tag-aws-education-champions","tag-azizi-seixas","tag-digital-twin-initiative","tag-media-and-innovation-lab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1815,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AWS Education Champion<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Population Health Informatics<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"Azizi](\"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Azizi-Seixas-consulting-1024x673.jpg\")
<\/p>\nInnovation Laboratory<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n\u2022 Research<\/strong>\u2014Determining how best to treat individual patients and improve health in communities
\n\u2022 Clinical Care<\/strong>\u2014Providing the right treatment to the right person at the right time at the right dosage
\n\u2022 Venture<\/strong>\u2014Bringing in commercial partners to scale and accelerate innovation on a national and global level
\n\u2022 Service and Outreach<\/strong>\u2014Making sure that underserved individuals and communities can access and use health-related technology people intended for cant use them\u2014digital literacy is variable depending on populations<\/p>\nDigital Twin Initiative<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n