New Western specialization links AI and health research
While artificial intelligence now guides everything from transportation to our music choices, the promise of harnessing data to inform and transform our health has more often been a matter of hope than reality.
This may soon change as Western launches Ontario’s first interdisciplinary graduate field dedicated to machine learning in health and medicine.
“Machine learning has really been a big buzzword in recent years but people are now realizing it’s not just hype. I think everyone in health, medicine and biomedical research needs to recognize that this is going to be an essential tool,” said Ali Khan, director of the new specialization and a professor of medical biophysics and imaging at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
The new collaborative specialization in machine learning in health and biomedical science will draw together as many as 30 master’s and doctoral students who already have degrees in computer science, health, engineering or medicine.
Together, they’ll become conversant – even if not completely fluent – in each other’s professional languages.
They’ll learn to apply machine learning to solve massively complex health issues that couldn’t be solved any other way.
Some applications could include reprogramming surgical robots, creating tools that identify early dementia through speech patterns, and data-crunching algorithms that can predict and prevent mental illness.
