CMU Algorithm Enables Chain of 10 Kidney Transplants
Using an algorithm developed by a CMU computer science research team, a chain of 10 (and counting) kidney transplants has been made possible. The team consists of faculty members Tuomas Sandholm and Avrim Blum, and PhD student David Abraham. A press release is available here.
So-called paired swaps, where two live kidney donors swap recipients in the hopes of increasing the chances of a tissue match, are fairly routine in transplant surgery today. Going beyond paired swaps has the potential to enable drastically more people to find matching donors; however, this turns out to be computationally difficult and thus significantly more sophisticated algorithms are needed.
The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains the national registry for cadaver organs. They now have plans to provide coordination, at a national scale, for living donor organ transplants. If done correctly, this could enable tens of thousands of people who need kidneys to get them. The Center for Computational Thinking, with generous support from and in collaboration with Microsoft Research, is providing partial funding to facilitate the further development of these algorithms to make them useful for UNOS and similar organizations. This is a great example of how computational thinking can actually save lives.
Peter Lee @ March 17, 2009
In a word: AWESOME. My brother/kidney donor sent this to me and it’s great to see new and unique advances in the non-medical aspects of transplantation. Living donation saved my life and, yet, it has long perplexed me why it’s still so infrequent while the transplant waiting lists continue to get longer and longer. Carnegie Mellon’s work will, over time, help so many people. Thank you for doing what you all do!
nice article man .:)
nice work man
[…] CMU Algorithm Enables Chain of 10 Kidney Transplants CSDiary Posted by root 4 hours ago (http://www.csdhead.cs.cmu.edu) My brother kidney donor sent this to me and it great to see new and unique advances in the non medical aspects of leave a comment name email will not be published web site footer powered by wordpress and shinra house Discuss | Bury | News | CMU Algorithm Enables Chain of 10 Kidney Transplants CSDiary […]
Thanks you for the great informative article…