The American Heart Association Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine—dedicated exclusively to advancing precision medicine in cardiovascular care—along with Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the winners of the inaugural cash competition of its data mining and innovative development grants.

All eight recipients of the 2017 data grants were eligible for cash prizes of either $5,000 or $10,000 based on program type and progress at the 1-year mark. Grant recipients presented their work to an expert panel from AWS and Association volunteers in May and were scored on accomplishments to date, cloud utilization, and impact toward stated goals.

The cash prize winners are Jyotishman Pathak, PhD, from Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY and Simon Lin, MD, from Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Pathak is developing a system using machine learning to map standardized data elements from heart failure studies. Dr. Lin created the CardioGenomics eXchange, which allows users to upload, explore, and analyze data files (generated from sequencing genetic samples), through a web-based application.

Awardees used AWS computational cloud credits to leverage the power of cloud computing, open data and new artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools available through the American Heart Association Precision Medicine Platform™.

The Precision Medicine Platform, powered by AWS, is becoming a central hub to the cardiovascular and stroke research community to access vast and diverse datasets and cloud-based workspaces that enable state-of-the-art high-performance computing, analytics, and collaboration to accelerate scientific discovery.

According to Jennifer Hall, MD, the American Heart Association’s Chief of its Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, “We designed the cash incentives available to inspire grantees to accelerate research outcomes in collaboration with the Association’s vision to disrupt traditional research methods to keep pace with the intersection of science and technology.”

The data mining and innovative development grantees will have another opportunity in May 2019 to compete for an additional cash prize.