‘I Came Up with the Idea to Create an Application Useful for Practicing Physicians’
Dmitry Ryabtsev, a 2024 graduate of the master's programme at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, created an AI-powered software service for ophthalmology during his two years of study. This product is now entering the market, and its developer plans to participate in establishing a working group on software engineering for medical applications at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, with the goal of promoting more genuinely useful domestic projects. In an interview with HSE News Service, Dr Ryabtsev shared his story of how a professional doctor turned into a programmer.
Dmitry Ryabtsev finished a school with advanced English instruction with a gold medal. He then received an honours degree in General Medicine from the Medical Academy and also completed his residency in ophthalmology with distinction. After that, he worked for seven years at the Helmholtz Research Institute of Eye Diseases, where he defended his PhD thesis. He also worked in the USA for several years and earned another PhD. This year, Dr Ryabtsev completed the master's programme in ‘System and Software Engineering’ at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science.
Dmitry Ryabtsev
How I Came to Computer Science
I have been interested in information technology since early childhood. At five, I wrote my first program in Basic on a ZX Spectrum computer. I always tried to improve my knowledge in computer science and use it to solve practical problems. During my residency, I participated in developing an electronic medical records system. While preparing my dissertation at the Helmholtz Research Institute of Eye Diseases, I developed an application for statistical analysis. I was also one of the project leaders for developing a Russian ophthalmic optical coherence tomograph (OCT), particularly focusing on developing visualisation and image analysis algorithms and automating the collection and analysis of medical research results.
From Hobby to Professional Activity
In computer science, I was self-taught, and information technology was just a hobby that I occasionally tried to apply in my work. When the idea of creating a comprehensive medical application formed, I decided to enrol in a master's programme. My main goal was to organize my knowledge and learn how to create software, not just write code. The ‘System and Software Engineering’ course perfectly suited my needs.
About Projects
During my studies, there were many team academic projects carried out with fellow students. Many of such projects, in my opinion, are quite promising, although they could not be fully realised. However, we might be able to return to them in the future.
Besides this, I worked on my own project—an application for doctors. As it was being implemented, I wrote term and thesis papers describing different stages of the project. We also involved students from various directions of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, who successfully defended their work and later expressed a desire to join on a permanent basis. In this manner, we formed a full-fledged team.
About the Software Service for Ophthalmology
I spent a lot of time on the computer analysis of medical images. However, all these developments were only parts of other projects. Then, I came up with an idea: to create a special application that would be useful for practicing physicians.
Our project is called EYAS. It is an application that analyses images of the fundus and generates a detailed description in natural language in the form of a template for a ready-made medical report
This greatly simplifies such image analysis and significantly saves time working with medical documentation.
At HSE University, we are collaborating with the Faculty of Computer Science and the HSE University Centre for R&D Commercialisation and Technology Transfer (CCRTT) on commercialising and further developing the project.
Plans for the Future
The immediate plans are related to the Faculty of Computer Science and the commercialisation of EYAS. Throughout our work, we used a new approach to developing AI-powered applications that have several advantages and key differences from other existing methods. We will continue to move in this direction to create other medical applications. We hope that a working group on software engineering for medical applications will soon be established at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science. However, our method may be applicable to analysing even more than just medical images.
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