High School Researcher Presents AI Diagnostic Tool for Rural Spinal Care at Dartmouth Rural Health Symposium

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio, May 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Aviraj Soin, a high school junior from Yellow Springs, Ohio, presented original artificial intelligence machine-learning research this week at the Dartmouth Rural Health Symposium's poster session, a two-day convening of researchers, clinicians, and policymakers focused on improving healthcare outcomes in rural communities. The symposium was held May 12–13, 2026, at the Hanover Inn in Hanover, New Hampshire, under the theme "Transforming Rural Health Care: Research-Driven Solutions, Real-World Impact."

Soin's poster — Leveling the Playing Field in Rural Health Care by Implementing an Artificial Intelligent Machine Learning Algorithm to Accurately Diagnose Spinal Pain Conditions: A 250-Patient Study — presents a machine-learning model trained on data from 250 patients and approximately 80 clinical variables, including pain scores, functional status, symptom location, duration, pain diaries, and prior treatments such as physical therapy, injections, and surgery. The dataset encompasses four spinal-pain diagnoses: lumbar radiculopathy, lumbar spondylosis without myelopathy, post-laminectomy syndrome, and sacroiliitis.

The research addresses a well-documented gap in rural healthcare delivery. Dartmouth Health, which serves more than 1.9 million patients across northern New England — more than half of them in rural areas — has noted that rural patients routinely face longer travel distances for specialty care, and that rural diagnosis is frequently complicated by limited access to advanced diagnostic tools and specialist shortages. Soin's model is designed not to replace physician judgment but to support it, offering clinicians in underserved communities a data-driven decision-support tool that may improve diagnostic consistency for complex spinal conditions.

The project is in active development. Soin outlines several next steps in the poster: identifying the variables with the greatest predictive value, reducing unnecessary inputs, expanding the patient dataset, and continuing to refine the algorithm as more data becomes available. Validation of the model's clinical utility remains a central objective.

The Dartmouth Rural Health Symposium was an appropriate venue for the work. The 2025 inaugural symposium drew more than 270 participants, and the 2026 program continued its focus on evidence-based approaches to rural health disparities, with programming spanning research presentations, policy discussions, and community partnerships.

Soin's appearance at Dartmouth reflects a pattern of early scientific engagement. Ohio Academy of Science records show him participating in State Science Day as a Yellow Springs-area student in both 2024 and 2025. He and his brother, Dhilen Soin, are also named as inventors on a bioluminescent tornado-maker system patent publication as well as a GPS Tracking system to track a moving object, and together they co-founded Soin Pharmaceuticals, a startup focused on oral thin-film drug-delivery technology.

Yellow Springs, a community of approximately 3,700 residents in southwestern Ohio, is itself a rural locality — giving Soin's interest in rural diagnostic equity a dimension that is both personal and professional. His current research asks whether validated AI tools can meaningfully narrow the gap in clinical decision support between rural communities and major academic medical centers, without requiring immediate access to large urban specialty networks.

SOURCE Soin Neuroscience