The University of Pittsburgh today announced the creation of the Vijayalakshmi Innovation Center in Women’s Health Analytics and Research (VIHAR), a global initiative to leverage advanced artificial intelligence tools and global collaborations to address disparities in women’s health.
VIHAR is fueled by an investment from Pitt’s School of Medicine and a gift from Vishnu Vardhan and Harsha Vardhini, siblings and co-founders of Vizzhy Inc., a generative health care AI systems company that works to locate the root causes of metabolic diseases and develop personalized health management guidance.
“Issues facing women and girls are underrepresented in medical research, which results in fewer treatments available for them,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine at Pitt. “VIHAR will directly address this issue by coalescing communities of researchers and developing innovative AI tools for efficient analyses.”
The center is named after the siblings’ mother, who had pregnancy complications that future mothers could avoid with a better understanding of women’s health at every stage of the life cycle. With their support, Vardhan and Vardhini hope to create a global collaboration of biomedical experts using advanced AI to expedite the process of addressing women’s and girls’ health issues across the globe.
“The University of Pittsburgh is extremely proud of our distinction as a national leader in community engagement as well as our important responsibility to lean into our unique skill set and expertise to improve health outcomes for our community and beyond,” said Chancellor Joan Gabel. “I want to thank Vishnu and Harsha for their incredible generosity, and I look forward to all the possibilities that VIHAR presents to ensure countless women live healthier and happier lives.”
The center will be housed in the School of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, already a proven leader in conducting international-scale science. It will build on the strength of Pitt’s biomedical technology ventures, including the Pattern Recognition from Biomedical Evidence (PRoBE) lab, founded by Associate Professor Vanathi Gopalakrishnan, who will also serve as VIHAR’s founding director.
Gopalakrishnan’s research involves using large data sets to examine women’s health disparities across the globe, including identifying patterns of maternal mortality and other medically preventable causes of death in women.
Through VIHAR, researchers will gather multiple types of biomedical data using a combination of artificial intelligence with mobile applications to create “female digital health twins,” which would allow researchers worldwide to simulate and optimize strategies for preventing and treating illnesses uniquely affecting girls and women.
“VIHAR will model the health trajectories of women and girls across every stage of life, capturing the richness of diverse ethnicities, environments, cultural and social contexts,” Gopalakrishnan said. “This will elevate precision medicine to new inclusive heights. The opportunities are limitless.”
The center will recruit staff and acquire the technology needed to begin operations, supported by funds from the School of Medicine, and develop training programs to prepare pre- and postdoctoral researchers for careers in advanced health analytics.
Additionally, VIHAR plans to partner with organizations like the Women’s Health and Education Center and the World Health Organization to accelerate global advancements in women’s health research.
“With VIHAR, we won’t just monitor and measure, we’ll transform,” Gopalakrishnan said. “We’ll be able to clearly track how women’s biological health and overall well-being improves worldwide.”
Photography by Rayni Shiring
