News

Dan and Jaky were invited to present at the Artificial INTELLIGENce for efficient community based primary healTh CARE (INTELLIGENT-CARE) workshop at Laval University on 20 September 2019, hosted by Drs. France Légaré, Samira A. Rahimi, and Mélissa Côté.

Their presentation helped open the one-day workshop by introducing AI to the diverse group of attendees (researchers, patients, clinicians, etc.) and by providing an overview of the body of research that includes AI and primary care. (Preprint:  https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/19003913v1)

The remainder of the day consisted of a few more presentations, such as physician perspectives on AI for family medicine and potentials of AI in LMIC countries; lively group discussions on topics including risks, benefits, and challenges of AI for primary care; and connecting with new and old friends and colleagues. Stay tuned for results from the workshop to be published.

More information about the grant that funded this workshop: http://webapps.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/funding/detail_e?pResearchId=8795357&p_version=CIHR&p_language=E&p_session_id=

Congrats ⁦@RahimiSamira⁩ pic.twitter.com/rROblycmGC

— France Legare (@SDM_ULAVAL) September 20, 2019

 

Mozhgan and Jaky attended Trillium Primary Health Care Research Day on June 5. Jaky presented on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Primary Care: What Research Has Been Done and How Do We Move Forward?’ We opted for an interactive poster design to encourage and begin gathering feedback and questions on the current and future state of AI research for PHC—one of our major findings from the scoping review being presented was low involvement of PHC researchers in the field. It was also great to meet and re-connect with people from the TUTOR-PHC program, which Jaky graduated from this spring!

 

This past winter Jaky had the opportunity to join a planning committee for the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC https://www.cfpc.ca) forum on ‘Imagining the Future of Family Medicine’. The CFPC’s annual forums are designed to bring together family medicine leaders from across Canada to explore a challenging topic, network, and provide input towards strategic objectives. This year’s Forum was a partnership between the CFPC and Associated Medical Services (AMS) Healthcare (https://www.ams-inc.on.ca) and focused on artificial intelligence and virtual technology. As a member of the planning committee contributed her researcher perspective and knowledge based on a scoping review on artificial intelligence and primary care that Dan and she are working on. She also had the opportunity to attend the two day Forum. Day one included presentations and discussions around AI and VC; Day two focused on medical education and how to prepare future doctors for effectively working with increasing levels of technology. Lots of great discussions and tackling of challenging questions! It was clear that Forum attendees care deeply about patients and about the wellbeing of people working in healthcare. Stay tuned for a White Paper and research priorities to be published by AMS.

It’s been a little bit since I started my internship so I thought I’d give an update on how things are going and some of the events I’ve been too.

I’m working on site at the Parkwood Mental Health building some days now. I have my own office and it’s nice to settle in and get to work. A lot of what I’m doing falls under the role of a Data Scientist. It’s great to get hands on experience working with data.

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April 1-2nd I was at IBM in Markham for a Design Think session. It was amazing to meet some of the staff working at IBM and see how they are facilitating the creative process in research. I got to meet a lot of the team that is working on the project I’ve been brought onto as part of my Mitacs Accelerate Internship. Dr. Alex Singer’s team from Winnipeg (and elsewhere), Dr. Zulkernine’s team from Queens University and Dr. Don Richardson, Dr. Renee Hunt and myself from the MacDonald Franklin OSI Clinic. It was very productive. I suggested crossing a river with a teleporter.

April 11th, I was fortunate enough to attend the Lawson 2019 Impact Awards with the OSI Clinic. Dr. Richardson was the recipient of the Innovation award for his work with PTSD in the Canadian Military. The keynote address was from Dr. Dorin Comaniciu on “Artificial Intelligence for Health Care: The Road Ahead”. There were fascinating visualizations of autoencoders and the way that neural networks could be explained by a visual interface.

April 26th, I was at the Parkwood Institute Research day, which highlighted different research going on around the Hospital. Seeing the initiatives going on gives some great insight on how everything is moving together to push forward health and medicine. Dr. Richard Booth gave a great presentation on how social media is affecting every aspect of medicine, health and society.

May 8th, I went to the Iniatives Ambassador’s event at Western.  The theme of the event was “Artificial Intelligence and the Future for Society“. There was a panel discussion that Dr. Lizotte of the Φ Lab was on. There was great discussion around the room about how the changes in Artificial Intelligence are going to change how we live our lives. There was reference to how the Industrial Revolution wasn’t as dramatic as the coming changes are meant to be. Productive meeting today about using IBM’s Watson for a project with the OSI Clinic, too!

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Anyways, I’ve got a paper I should be working on.  Until next time!

Hi all, Brent checking in.

I’m happy to announce that I’m working with Drs. Hunt & Richardson of the Parkwood Institute and specialists from IBM & Lawson Health Research Institute. The work involves applications of Watson Explorer to facilitate analysis of the data in question.

It’s an exciting project and I’ll do my best to post updates as they come.

 

Best,

Brent

Jaky attended the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in Montreal, Oct 14 – 17, 2018, to present our work on the “Impact of Social Determinants of Health Information on Predictive Models for Chronic Kidney Disease in Primary Health Care.”

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to attend the 31^st annual Canadian Student Health Research Forum in Winnipeg, MB from June 12 to 14. CSHRF brings together doctoral students from across Canada to participate in a poster competition and present research on all things health related – from genetics to health policy. Western’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry sent one student from each graduate department, accompanied by the associate Dean of Medicine, Dr. Susanne Schmid. I had a lot of fun representing the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and received honourable mention for our work on “A Topic Modelling Approach to Understanding the Body of Research on Artificial Intelligence and Primary Care.” In addition to student presentations there were networking activities, professional development sessions, and Gairdner Symposium.

Welcome to the new Φ lab site! Please bear with us as we get things up and running.