Business
Vir Biotechnology Scientists Named Winners of the BARDA and HHS-Sponsored Pediatric COVID-19 Data Challenge
SAN FRANCISCO, April 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) today announced that a team of three company scientists were named one
About this update from Vir Biotechnology, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"SAN FRANCISCO, April 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) today announced that a team of three company scientists were named one of the winners of the Pediatric COVID-19 Data Challenge, sponsored by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The challenge asked participants to develop, train and validate computational models that could help healthcare providers predict which of their pediatric patients with COVID-19 were likely to develop severe complications. The dataset comprised of de-identified electronic health records data available through the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave. The N3C is a harmonized data repository of records from more than 116,000 pediatric outpatients from across the United States. The contributing scientists were Istvan Bartha, Ph.D., M.S., a senior scientist at Humabs Biomed, a subsidiary of Vir; Cyrus Maher, Ph.D., MPH, M.S., director of machine learning at Vir; and Amalio Telenti, M.D., Ph.D., chief data scientist and senior vice president of bioinformatics at Vir. Responding to the challenge, the Vir team employed a state-of-the-art machine learning model called the “missingness-aware gradient boosted tree classifier,” which assessed the risk of hospitalization and severe outcomes among pediatric patients by extracting patterns in both the data that were present and the observations that were absent. “The tremendous volume of data generated during the pandemic provides significant opportunities for the development and implementation of predictive tools that can help anticipate critical care needs, optimize treatment for the highest risk patients and reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality,” said Dr. Telenti. “We were thrilled to successfully contribute to this challenge with our model and hope that these efforts will foster a new generation of decision support tools that will result in improved patient care and outcomes.” “This award and acknowledgement from BARDA and HHS speak not only to the capabilities of our world-class scientists, but also to our leadership in developing and leveraging impactful artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. We deploy these cutting-edge tools each day, as we work across our pipeline to better understand and treat...