AEHRC victorious at the 2023 ALTA Workshop

December 4th, 2023

AEHRC researchers awarded top prize for their work in predicting bacterial infections.

Our researchers joined delegates in Melbourne for the 21st Australasian Language Technology (ALTA) Workshop. The yearly workshop connects the community across Australia and New Zealand who are working towards innovations in natural language processing and computational linguistics. 

Over the three-day program, delegates attended keynote presentations, industry demonstrations, and panel discussions. AEHRC researchers presented their work in using digital technology to tackle bacterial infections.

After a busy three days, the AEHRC’s Jinghui Liu and Anthony Nguyen were rewarded with the Best Paper Award. This recognised the work achieved in their paper, “Enhancing Bacterial Infection Prediction in Critically Ill Patients by Integrating Clinical Text”. 

Their award-winning paper used machine learning and multimodal modelling approaches to predict patients at risk of developing bacterial infections. Using datasets from real ICU patients, the paper describes how these methods could improve outcomes for critically ill patients. 

This research was completed as part of the Herston Infectious Diseases Institute’s (HeIDI) Precision Dosing Project. The project is a joint venture between the AEHRC and the Queensland Government to provide a tool for precision pharmaceutical dosing for ICU patients.  

Together with the HeIDI, the AEHRC are using digital technology to improve patient outcomes and work towards preventing healthcare-associated infections across Queensland.  

Jinghui Lui (pictured) and Anthony Nyugen of the AEHRC received the Best Paper Award at the 2023 ALTA Workshop.