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Jared Lewis is a professor of history, philosophy and the humanities. He has taught various courses in these fields since 2001. A former licensed financial adviser, he now works as a writer and has published numerous articles on education and business. He holds a bachelor's degree in history, a master's degree in theology and has completed doctoral work in American history.

UNR Med Professor Receives $1.48M Grant To Improve National CPR Training Through Films

Would you know what to do if someone's heart suddenly stopped beating? Maybe you'd recall training from work or school and begin chest compressions to the beat of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees? Maybe you'd be afraid of hurting someone and call 911 to get professional medical help. Or, maybe you'd be overwhelmed and not know how to help. What if you were a high school athlete and one of your teammates went into cardiac arrest during practice or at a game?

Most people are more likely to call an ambulance than try to perform CPR on their own, which means fewer people survive a cardiac arrest, according to the research of Dr. Lorrel Toft, a cardiologist and associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.

More than 350,000 people in the U.S. Experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, and fewer than 11% of them survive. Being near someone who can perform CPR improves a person's chance of survival but CPR training rates in the U.S. Are low. While 43 states require high school students to learn CPR, only 30% of students can perform high-quality CPR immediately after training, and Dr. Toft's surveys show fewer than half retain that knowledge six months later.

To make CPR training among high school students and athletes more effective and save more lives, Dr. Toft is developing interactive films and other digital media with funding from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association in collaboration with Coram Technologies. She received a two-year, $1.48 million grant from the NIH in September to use interactive digital media and game-like experiences to teach CPR to high school students. It builds off her work to create realistic, interactive films to train student-athletes to identify cardiac arrest and give CPR on the field immediately, which was funded by a three-year $400,000 grant from the AHA in 2019.

"Getting trained to give CPR is important, but we can be more efficient and effective with training as a nation," Dr. Toft said. "I focus on high school because that's where the opportunity lies, but there are many other applications."

First, tackle the athletes …

Several high-profile professional athletes recently experienced a cardiac arrest on the field, including 25-year-old Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who received a "severe blow" to the chest at just the right time during a game in January 2023. He received CPR on the field and survived, and as a result, played in the 2023 NFL season.

Dr. Toft hopes cases such as this will draw more attention to the need for effective CPR training. Cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death in high school athletes, standing at one in 50,000 to 80,000 students each year. The nature of these cardiac arrests and the potential delay in getting help on the field make high school athletics an important niche where Dr. Toft and her team can make a difference.

"We want to equip and empower athletes to be ready to respond if they ever have a teammate who collapses from cardiac arrest," she said. "Every minute of delay to giving CPR or defibrillation decreases survival by 10%."

High school sports teams often rely on off-field trainers or emergency first responders to aid players on the field. Dr. Toft said those seconds or minutes of waiting cost a life, and if players know how to administer CPR, they can save lives instead.

The training film her team will develop focuses on helping athletes identify the signs of cardiac arrest — to separate them from a concussion, spinal injury or other common athletic injuries — and be equipped to act fast. With additional education, teammates can feel confident in their ability to quickly assess and act on the field before medical professionals or trainers arrive.

Dr. Toft's goal is to increase the retention of CPR skills among athletes and high school students in general, advance CPR training in high schools and eventually push the training to professional athletes.

"It's a simple idea, but it moves the needle in a significant way," Dr. Toft said.

… Then the world

By surveying teachers and instructors, Dr. Toft found significant variability in the way schools train students to perform CPR. With standard training, only 12% of students can perform high-quality CPR six months after training but her research also shows that interactive training methods can be more effective.

The novel interactive CPR training films developed by Dr. Toft directly engage students by showing them a scenario and pausing to ask alternating student teams direct questions. This approach ensures they engage in active rather than passive learning.

"So, the 911 dispatcher will say, 'Are they breathing?' then the film pauses, and we ask the audience, 'Is he breathing yes or no?' Then we move on to the next part of the film," Dr. Toft explained.

The film also addresses the emotional and psychological impacts of needing to give CPR to a friend, family member or teammate.

"We are trying to mimic the situation during training and evoke realistic feelings so those intense feelings won't paralyze anyone who encounters a real cardiac arrest," Dr. Toft said.

Of particular importance is addressing how to perform CPR on women as some people may be more afraid of giving CPR to a woman, which can hinder the care female victims receive.

The NIH grant will specifically address how to perform CPR on women by addressing barriers to CPR for women such as fear of inappropriate touching and it will also be the first CPR training in the U.S. To feature a female victim.

"Even in virtual reality, women receive CPR less often in public than men do," Dr. Toft said.

In the end, Dr. Toft hopes to develop an entire system of interactive CPR training films that are adopted nationwide across high schools, sports teams and beyond using different scenarios and new techniques that stick with students longer.

But why, though?

"I've always been interested in resuscitation," Dr. Toft said noting that she witnessed many cardiac arrest victims while serving in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, because people had not received immediate CPR.

"I got so exhausted by that," she said. "I started doing public training projects, like 'Start The Heart' in Louisville, with a fellow cardiologist who was also tired of seeing the same thing and feeling helpless."

She later met Martin Percy, a British interactive film director, who created interactive CPR training films in the United Kingdom.

"But I wanted to tweak it, make it more competitive, and do hands-on practice," Dr. Toft said.

She saw sports as an entry point where she could make significant change and impact in a relatively short amount of time. Dr. Toft started offering CPR training to sports fans heading into the KFC Yum! Center stadium in downtown Louisville.

Lorrel Toft, M.D., poses with her Webby Award and Emmy for her CPR training films.

In the 10 years since working in that ICU, Toft has continued to iterate ways to present CPR training and has been recognized by other organizations for that work. Her team received a Webby Award for "Cardiac Crash: Monica," a film that is part of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada's initiative to increase the chances of survival for all genders in the event of a cardiac arrest. Her research on a novel interactive film to teach CPR in high schools was recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. And her original interactive CPR training film "HEART CLASS" received an Emmy in 2020.

"Research is a long game and can make you feel disconnected from the effect you're having," she said. "But since I'm always training people on the grant, I see the practical result, and it drives me."

Next, Toft's team will begin writing the new films, casting, scripting, recording scenes, editing, implementing and seeking feedback from trainees. She hopes to see nationwide adoption of these videos across high schools, professional athletic teams and beyond.

"It's been a yearslong journey of seeing an opportunity to address the problem, researching, collaborating, looking at how the laws work and getting to this point to secure the grant and make this game-changing program," she said.

CarePods And GatorTronGPT Automated AI Medical Care

Imagine an artificial intelligence system so advanced that it can create medical notes with such accuracy that even experienced doctors are fooled into thinking they were written by a colleague. This is not a scene from a science fiction novel; it's happening right now at the University of Florida (UF). Researchers at UF, in collaboration with NVIDIA, have developed GatorTronGPT, an AI program that is reshaping the way medical documentation is handled.

The creation of GatorTronGPT marks a significant step forward in the field of AI. This innovative model has been trained on a vast dataset, which includes 82 billion words from anonymized patient records at UF Health. To ensure the AI could understand the complexities of medical language and patient care, researchers supplemented this with an additional 195 billion words. The result is an AI that can replicate the note-writing skills of physicians with remarkable precision.

At the heart of GatorTronGPT is OpenAI's GPT-3, the cutting-edge AI framework known for generating text that closely resembles human writing. This is especially useful when dealing with the specialized terminology found in medical records. A key feature of GPT-3, and by extension GatorTronGPT, is its focus on privacy, ensuring that sensitive patient information remains protected.

Automated AI medical care

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GatorTronGPT

The development of GatorTronGPT is a key part of UF's broader initiative to integrate AI into its various academic disciplines. The university is committed to leveraging AI to improve different sectors, with healthcare being a prime focus. By bringing AI into medical documentation, UF is leading a new frontier in healthcare innovation.

To train an AI as complex as GatorTronGPT, you need substantial computing power. This is where UF's HiPerGator supercomputer comes into play. With NVIDIA's support, the supercomputer provides the robust capabilities needed to handle the large datasets and sophisticated algorithms that are part of the AI's training process.

One of the most exciting aspects of GatorTronGPT is its potential to streamline healthcare documentation. The AI can automate the creation of medical notes, crafting documents that are nearly identical to those written by human clinicians. This innovation is poised to save healthcare professionals valuable time and reduce burnout, allowing them to focus more on patient care.

The success of GatorTronGPT is a testament to the power of collaborative research. The project brought together 14 faculty members from UF and UF Health, spanning a range of disciplines. This collaboration highlights the interdisciplinary nature of AI research, especially in the realm of medicine.

Funding for the project comes from several sources, including the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute on Aging. The diversity of these funding sources underscores the recognized potential of AI to significantly improve patient care and the efficiency of healthcare services.

GatorTronGPT is a prime example of how AI can be tailored to meet the specific needs of the healthcare industry. Its ability to generate medical notes that are indistinguishable from those written by human doctors is not just an impressive technological achievement; it's a sign of a more efficient future for healthcare documentation.

Filed Under: Technology News, Top News

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