A Florida State University research team has received a $350,000 grant from the Humana Foundation to develop and test an artificial intelligence-powered system that helps older adults build social connections through volunteering and community engagement.

The two-year project, “ALCOVE: A Personalized AI Concierge to Promote Community Engagement and Social Connectedness Among Older Adults,” will create a digital platform tailored to the needs, preferences and lifestyles of older adults across North Florida.

Led by FSU School of Information Professor and Institute for Successful Longevity Director Zhe He, the interdisciplinary team includes co-principal investigators Mia Liza A. Lustria and Dawn Carr, along with collaborators from multiple FSU departments and partner institutions.

“Social isolation is one of the most pressing public health crises, yet it is often an overlooked challenge facing older adults, and this grant from the Humana Foundation gives us the opportunity to do something meaningful about it,” He said. “ALCOVE harnesses the power of AI to help older adults find meaningful volunteer and social activities in their community — in a way that feels personal and supportive. It supports people in taking meaningful steps to reconnect with their communities and improve their overall well-being. We are deeply grateful to the Humana Foundation and look forward to making a real difference in the lives of older adults in North Florida.”

The ALCOVE system will function as a personalized “digital social concierge,” guiding users through a simple conversational process to learn about their interests, mobility, transportation options and social preferences. The platform will then match participants with vetted volunteer and community opportunities and provide ongoing reminders, encouragement and follow-up support to help them stay engaged.

The project addresses a growing public health concern. Research has linked chronic loneliness among older adults to increased risks of cognitive decline, heart disease, depression and premature death, as well as billions of dollars in annual health care costs. ALCOVE aims to connect older adults to community, purpose and opportunity.

“Finding opportunities is only part of the solution. People are much more likely to stay engaged when opportunities reflect who they are and fit the realities of their daily lives,” Lustria said. “AI makes that level of personalization possible by learning about each person’s interests, motivations, abilities, transportation options, and other real-world circumstances, allowing ALCOVE to deliver tailored recommendations and ongoing support that simply wouldn’t be feasible at this scale. Ultimately, our goal is to make meaningful community engagement more accessible, helping older adults find purpose, build relationships, and strengthen their connections with the communities around them.”

Carr, director of FSU’s Claude Pepper Center, noted the importance of the specific focus of this project on volunteering.

“Volunteering is a particularly novel and important health behavior to focus on with older adults at risk of experiencing social isolation and loneliness because it is among the most well-established activities for promoting meaningful social connections,” she said. “Not only does volunteering help people feel more connected in the community and with others, it’s also as effective as other health behaviors like exercising and eating well, showing that people who regularly volunteer experience reduced physiological aging over time.”

The project reflects FSU’s leadership in community-engaged and innovative aging research. ALCOVE builds on more than seven years of collaborative research by the team, including NIH-funded efforts to develop AI tools that support healthy aging and long-term engagement among older adults.

The Humana Foundation grant supports the development of the AI system, community-based research and evaluation of outcomes related to social engagement, loneliness and emotional well-being.

Through focus groups and co-design workshops, researchers will work with older adults in North Florida to identify challenges to social participation and shape the platform’s development. The team will then test the system in a two-year pilot study with approximately 50 participants.

Ultimately, the research team aims to use findings from the ALCOVE pilot to pursue additional federal funding and expand the platform to serve older adults nationwide.

The project includes collaborators from Weill Cornell Medicine and Arizona State University, as well as community partners such as the Tallahassee Senior Center, which will help connect researchers with local participants and organizations.

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Florida State University School of Information professor Zhe He has received two major honors for his work in health informatics.

He was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) and awarded a $280,000 grant from the National a2 Pilot Awards Competition, funded by the National Institute on Aging.

“Dr. Zhe He has been an extraordinary colleague from the moment he joined the FSU faculty,” said Dean Michelle Kazmer of the College of Communication and Information. “He is an excellent teacher and mentor, a committed member of the university community and has conducted transformational research in the area of health informatics. Dr. He, along with his students and research colleagues across the globe, has done foundational research and systems design to improve health outcomes for everyone. I am grateful and proud that he is a member of the faculty in the College of Communication and Information.”

IAHSI recognizes global leaders who advance healthcare through research, education, and innovation. This year, the academy named 18 Fellows worldwide, including 11 from North America.

“Being elected as a Fellow of the IAHSI is an incredible honor and a deeply humbling experience,” He said. “It represents international recognition of the work I’ve done over the past 17 years to advance biomedical and health informatics.”

He’s research focuses on the intersection of biomedical and health informatics, artificial intelligence and big data analytics, and he serves as the director of the FSU Institute for Successful Longevity; director of the UF-FSU CTSA Biostatistics, Informatics, and Research Design Program; and chair of the AMIA Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Working Group.

He first connected with IAHSI through his involvement with the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), which founded IAHSI in 2017. Over the years, he has presented research, organized panels, and collaborated with scholars internationally through IMIA conferences.

“He is an excellent teacher and mentor, a committed member of the university community and has conducted transformational research in the area of health informatics. Dr. He, along with his students and research colleagues across the globe, has done foundational research and systems design to improve health outcomes for everyone.”

– Dean Michelle Kazmer, College of Communication and Information

“I was both surprised and honored to be nominated and elected by such a distinguished group of peers whose work I have long admired,” He said.

As a Fellow, He aims to support the academy’s goal of advancing health sciences informatics by strengthening global collaboration on pressing issues like climate change, aging and the ethical use of artificial intelligence in health care. He also looks forward to working with international colleagues on leadership practices, sharing knowledge and building the capacity of low-resource settings and communities.

In addition to his IAHSI Fellowship, He was recently awarded a one-year $280,000 research grant from the National a2 Pilot Awards Competition, hosted annually by the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) for Aging Research Program and funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

The grant supports his project, “Developing a Multi-Agent AI System for Explaining Lab Results to Older Adults,” which is part of his ongoing research initiative, LabGenie.

“This recognition underscores the importance of addressing the unique challenges older adults and their caregivers face in interpreting lab test results,” He said.

He began working with the National Institute on Aging through research on health and aging, collaborating with clinicians, behavioral scientists, and computer scientists. He has also earned two other NIA grants for projects on clinical trial optimization and personalized AI tools.

He hopes LabGenie will expand to include symptom tracking, contextual insight generation, patient portal integration, and shared decision-making support, making lab results more comprehensive and accessible for older patients and their caregivers.

“My hope is that LabGenie becomes a model for how AI can enhance patient engagement for those with varying health literacy levels and improve outcomes, especially for older adults with multiple chronic conditions,” He said.

For more information about FSU’s College of Communication and Information, visit cci.fsu.edu.

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The development of more accessible artificial intelligence (AI) models has transformed the field of health diagnoses and medicine, with AI being used for diagnostic accuracy, personalized treatment plans, interpreting medical images, streamlining operations, supporting remote patient monitoring and much more.

Researchers from the eHealth Lab at Florida State University’s School of Information have been evaluating the application of AI as a tool to aid health care providers in making more accurate patient diagnoses. The advancement has the potential to enhance treatment methods and improve patient outcomes.

Senior Author and Director for FSU’s Institute for Successful Longevity Zhe He and Visiting Assistant Professor Balu Bhasuran are among the co-authors on the multi-institutional research. The study has already garnered significant attention, with the paper being accessed more than 3,000 times since its publication in mid-March.

The paper, which was published in npj Digital Medicine, expands on FSU’s LabGenie project, a patient-engagement tool aimed at improving older adults’ understanding of lab test results.

The research team has been exploring the feasibility of using large language models (LLMs), a type of AI that learns from a large amount of text to answer questions accurately, to assist clinicians and improve differential diagnosis accuracy and efficiency. Differential diagnosis (DDx) is a critical step in clinical decision-making, helping health care providers distinguish between conditions with similar symptoms.

“The AI generated differential diagnosis is very comprehensive in covering all possible diagnoses for patients,” He said. “What this study helps show is how AI can potentially be used as a tool to help practitioners make more informed decisions for their patients.”

The study involved utilizing the LLMs to generate lists of the top one, five and ten DDx for clinicians’ evaluation. Researchers assessed the accuracy and predictive power of the LLMs and examined how incorporating lab test results impacted their diagnostic accuracy.

“What this study helps show is how AI can potentially be used as a tool to help practitioners make more informed decisions for their patients.”

– Zhe He, senior author and director for FSU’s Institute for Successful Longevity

The study tested five LLMs — GPT-4, GPT-3.5, Llama-2-70b, Claude-2 and Mixtral-8x7B — using clinical vignettes, or narrative patient-related cases, derived from 50 case reports. Their findings reveal that lab test data significantly improves diagnostic accuracy, with GPT-4 achieving the highest performance.

Specifically, GPT-4 achieved 55% top one accuracy and 60% top 10 accuracy with lab data, with lenient accuracy reaching 80%. Lab tests, including liver function, metabolic/toxicology panels and serology/immune tests, were generally interpreted correctly by the LLMs.

“When we asked the model for the top differential diagnosis, most of these models were able to produce the patient’s exact diagnosis,” Bhasuran said. “That’s very interesting because it implies that even in rare case diseases, the model is able to predict that.”

The research aims to help address well-known areas of concern often felt in health care settings from both the provider and patient perspective. Accurate diagnosis is crucial for effective patient management, directly influencing treatment decisions and overall patient outcomes. Reducing diagnostic errors helps streamline patient care, eliminating the need for excessive or repeated testing and ultimately lowering health care costs through reduced hospital stays and unnecessary procedures.

The work was supported by an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant and partially supported by the University of Florida-Florida State University Clinical and Translational Science Award and the National Library of Medicine. It also included collaboration with Tampa General Hospital and coauthors from Florida State University, the National Library of Medicine, Emory University, University of South Florida and University of North Texas Health Science Center. FSU Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) students Angelique Deville, Hailey Thompson, Maggie Awad and Yash Alva assisted in extracting key information for the case reports.

To learn more, visit ehealthlab.cci.fsu.edu.

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Florida State University has named a prolific researcher in health informatics as the director of the Institute for Successful Longevity (ISL).

Zhe He, associate professor in the School of Information, succeeds Professor of Psychology Neil Charness who retired last year. Since joining FSU in 2015, He has been deeply engaged with ISL, collaborating with faculty affiliates across disciplines to advance research on aging and technology.

“I am honored to step into the role of Director of the Institute for Successful Longevity and to continue building upon ISL’s strong foundation of research and collaboration,” He said. “Aging research is at a pivotal moment, with advancements in data science, artificial intelligence and digital health offering transformative opportunities to enhance the lives of older adults. My vision for ISL is to foster an innovative, interdisciplinary environment where researchers, students, and community partners come together to develop impactful solutions that promote longevity, health and well-being.”

ISL is a multidisciplinary research institute dedicated to exploring the complexities of life as an older individual, with researchers tackling health, cognition, recreation, mobility, financial security and other concerns. The institute includes more than 100 faculty affiliates across 11 colleges and works closely with other research groups across campus, including the Pepper Institute for Aging and Public Policy, the Pepper Center and the Center for Brain Repair.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, a master’s degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Following his doctoral studies, he conducted his postdoctoral research at Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics before joining FSU in 2015.

He has a distinguished research record at the intersection of biomedical informatics, AI in medicine, and aging research that improves health outcomes and enhances the quality of life for older adults. His work in data science has leveraged electronic health records, natural language processing, and machine learning to study key aging-related issues, including the generalizability of clinical trials on cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, seasonality of lab results, and the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions among older adults.

His research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Mental Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Institute for Successful Longevity, and industry partners such as Eli Lilly and Company.

“These projects reflect Dr. He’s commitment to translating data-driven research into real-world solutions,” said FSU Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Jim Clark. “Dr. He is a tenacious researcher who is constantly examining how we can utilize technology and faculty expertise from across campus to deliver health care solutions to older adults and help them live happier, healthier lives. We are excited for him to take the reins at ISL and advance the university’s important work on aging.”

He served as ISL interim director for seven months before being named the permanent director. During his tenure as interim, he created three working groups — Advanced Technology, Basic Science, and Clinical Research — to enhance ISL’s research synergy and foster faculty and student engagement. He also enhanced the institute’s public engagement efforts.

ISL faculty also work closely with community organizations dedicated to aging, such as the Alzheimer’s Project, Big Bend Hospice and others.

“Our research can really drive care and policy at the center of aging,” He said. “It is pivotal that we work with our community partners to disseminate this knowledge and move it beyond the lab into the world. I’m looking forward to working with more groups and individuals moving forward so we can share the impact of our work more broadly and help people who are facing the challenges and opportunities that accompany aging.”

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Florida State University researchers and a guest speaker from the University of Pennsylvania considered the challenges and opportunities that technology and artificial intelligence present for aging populations in holistic health care during a panel discussion hosted by the FSU Institute for Successful Longevity.

The Oct. 9 event, held at the Tallahassee Senior Center, was part of FSU Discovery Days, a week that celebrates FSU research, creativity and innovation.

“Events like this allow us to connect directly with the community, hear their perspectives and better understand their needs,” Interim Director of the ISL Zhe He said. “Technology can enhance the quality of life for older adults, but it’s essential that we address their unique challenges and concerns. This event is not just about showcasing advancements — it’s about ensuring that innovations in technology are accessible, user-friendly and aligned with the real needs of the people we aim to support.”

Special guest George Demiris, the Mary Alice Bennett University Professor and Penn Integrated Knowledge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, kicked off the event with his talk “Aging and Technology: Challenges and Opportunities.” Demiris highlighted research focusing on the various ways technology can support aging in place while addressing issues such as social isolation and health monitoring.

Demiris spoke about how artificial intelligence and wearable smart technology can be integrated into smart homes, allowing health care providers and family to collect integral health information about aging patients that can be used to help monitor behavior and health patterns seamlessly and unobtrusively.

“This technology can help us understand how someone is living in their own home,” Demiris said. “We can see if someone becomes more restless at night, or that they move around more or less frequently in their own home.”

This kind of data collection can provide care teams with the information to create tailored, holistic care plans to best fit the needs of each patient.

Following Demiris’ talk, he joined the panel of FSU researchers including He, Director of FSU’s Claude Pepper Center and Associate Professor of Sociology Dawn Carr, FSU Professor of Information Mia Liza A. Lustria and Professor of Sociology and Director of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy Miles Taylor.

The panel answered questions posed by community members surrounding data collection integrity, levels of patient care and current research.

“We need to recognize that aging is diverse, and technology must be adaptable to meet the unique needs of each individual,” He said.

Later in the day, Demiris also gave the talk “Artificial Intelligence and Aging: Examples and Lessons Learned” at FSU’s Claude Pepper Center.

The FSU panelists are part of a research team awarded a $1 million grant earlier this year from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to develop LabGenie, a tool to help older patients better understand the results of medical lab health tests.

FSU Discovery Days events continue through Saturday, Oct. 12. For the full calendar of events, visit discoverydays.fsu.edu.

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