EnMed’s Keyvon Rashidi’s team wins MD+ Datathon event
Keyvon Rashidi, EnMed Class of 2026, is putting his inventiveness to work beyond the demanding EnMed curriculum with a major extracurricular win.
Rashidi was part of a team that triumphed at the second annual MD+ Datathon, placing first for its data-driven plan to use machine learning to prevent underdiagnosis
of chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Competing against more than 200 medical students, residents, graduate students, and industry professionals from institutions across the nation, Rashidi’s team crafted a groundbreaking project entitled, “Minimizing Chronic Kidney Disease Underdiagnosis Using Machine Learning.”
He and teammates Dany Alkurdi (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai), Felipe Giuste (Emory University School of Medicine), Lawrence Huang (Brown University), and Sachin Shankar (University of Cincinnati College of Medicine) employed data-driven methods on the expansive MIMIC-IV dataset a freely available large medical database, to predict CKD in individuals using patient-specific electronic health record data.
The team’s goal is to improve care and quality of life through early detection of the devastating, progressive disease that affects more than 35 million individuals in the U.S. and costs Medicare alone more than $64 billion annually.
“Our team was thinking that no patient should fall through the cracks, and we wanted to show that machine learning can be a huge benefit in predicting undiagnosed cases,” Rashidi said. “The findings show we can detect previously undiagnosed CKD, which can lead to earlier disease management, slower progression of the disease, and lower healthcare costs in in a big way.”
Rashidi worked on the project by meeting “virtually” with his colleagues over the four-week competition. Out of 28 teams, Rashidi’s group was selected to present a “live pitch” before a panel of five accomplished judges from the healthcare innovation sector.
Their pitch won. Each team member received a $600 prize.
“This team presented a very interesting concept,” said Amit Phull, M.D., Chief Physician Experience Officer at Doximity, who served as a judge. “They won as a result of their idea’s potential that, if implemented and deployed, might truly make an impact in the healthcare system by driving better patient outcomes and resource/cost savings.”
Rashidi, son of an engineer father and a pharmacist mother has been interested in “taking devices apart, putting them back together and fundamentally understanding how they work since childhood. He cites his parents and educators along the way as role models.
His inventiveness resulted in earlier devising an inflatable stent which has been granted a utility patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
