AI4Society Dialogues

AI4Society Dialogues, S2E7 - Social robots and assistive technologies

As advances are made in artificial intelligence, questions are being raised about how we should relate to AI, especially when it’s embodied intelligence. In other words - how will we relate to robots? Dr. Adriana Ríos Rincón is a researcher who uses robots in her work with children. We talk about her thoughts on artificial intelligence, the importance of play in her research (and what she does for fun), how AI intersects with assistive technologies and her work to democratize access to these technologies and the role of robots in care. “For most people technology makes things easier, for people with disabilities technology makes things possible….I’m interested in developing new low cost and high quality assistive technologies.” - Adriana Ríos Rincón Dr. Adriana Ríos Rincón is Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta. Her current research is devoted to investigating the use of assistive technologies to assess and promote cognitive skills and engagement in play in individuals with disabilities, mainly those with motor and cognitive impairment including those living with dementia. She is also interested in exploring the use of information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence to support decisions about transitions across the continuum of care in older adults and individuals with disabilities. Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health. Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AITechnical Producer: Corey StroederSpecial thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4SocietyDr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and DentistryCopyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

AI4Society Dialogues, S2E6 - Envisioning medical scan data as the 21st century stethoscope

A stethoscope is a functional device, used to examine a patient...but it’s also become an enduring symbol for the use of technology in patient care. Yet...when it comes to advances in technology - what might a new, 21st century stethoscope look like? Dr. Jacob Jaremko believes that with AI enabled technology, we can transform medical imaging at the point of care.  We talk about his thoughts on artificial intelligence in the context of medicine, his journey from an undergrad civil engineer to medical student to the world of artificial neural networks, what he’s learned in becoming an entrepreneur and thoughts on healthcare data, AI and ethics. “Diversity is absolutely crucial to innovation. The way to produce innovation most reliably and effectively is to take smart people from different backgrounds and put them together in a room to solve a problem...everyone sees it differently...and new ideas come out of that. ” - Jacob Jaremko Dr. Jacob Jaremko is a pediatric musculoskeletal radiologist, who is an Associate Professor and AHS Endowed Chair in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta. He’s also a Canada AI Chair and CIFAR fellow. Dr. Jaremko has been working with artificial intelligence since 1999, completing his PhD thesis in biomedical engineering. More recently, he co-founded MEDO, one of Alberta’s most promising health tech startups. Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health. Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AITechnical Producer: Corey StroederSpecial thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4SocietyDr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and DentistryCopyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

AI4Society Dialogues, S2E4 - Predicting cancer to drive early interventions

What if we had better ways to predict cancer and a tailored plan to intervene early in the process? Dr. Adam Kinnaird is conducting leading edge research in the area of prostate cancer, which affects 1 in 7 men in Canada throughout their life. We talk about his research into early interventions in cancer, why prostate cancer is so hard to diagnose, using AI/ML techniques in precision diagnostics, surgical robots, interdisciplinary research collaboration and why he’s excited about the future of precision medicine. “Prostate cancer is a spectrum, [from low to high risk]...my particular research looks at the patient population for low risk prostate cancer...and doing active surveillance. We’re trying to better risk stratify men...we are using advanced imaging techniques, MRI and micro-ultrasound ...as well as next generation genetic sequencing... We’re trying to come up with a composite risk score at the individual patient level.” - Adam Kinnaird Dr. Adam Kinnaird is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, surgery department, at the University of Alberta. He is a urological surgeon and graduated as a Vanier Scholar with the Governor General’s Gold Medal at the University of Alberta. Dr. Kinnaird is an award-winning researcher and recently completed an international fellowship at UCLA. Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health. Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AITechnical Producer: Corey StroederSpecial thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4SocietyDr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and DentistryCopyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

AI4Society Dialogues, S2E3 - Data, Virtual Care and Precision Health

Advances in digital innovation, including artificial intelligence, are rapidly changing the face of both healthcare research and the delivery of care. In his work as a clinician, professor and researcher, Dr. Daniel Baumgart is working to advance precision medicine on all of these fronts. We talk about his early interest in computers, why he chose to pursue an MBA in addition to his medical background, his research on Crohn’s disease and his recent work on virtual care, why Alberta can play a leading role in digital health innovation, and being a clinician during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Healthcare is delivered in three classical settings – an outpatient clinic, the emergency room and the hospital. There are huge gaps between those encounters….a lot of information from patients (data, feedback) is lost because they only meet us in these classic encounters. In the future…we will be going to (the patient)…they will participate more in their healthcare experience. Which will be part of the driver of digital health and will produce the data that artificial intelligence needs to shine.” - Daniel Baumgart Dr. Daniel Baumgart is the Director of the Division of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine, at the University of Alberta. Dr. Baumgart holds an MD, PhD and an MBA, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is a founding member of the University of Alberta Precision Health signature area and leads research with the Alberta Precision Health Innovation, Research and Technology Ecosystem. His list of accolades, funding and partnerships are numerous. He has been the principal investigator on over 200 multinational clinical trials. Recent research areas include projects on AI-enabled decision support systems, digital health and virtual care. Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health. Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AITechnical Producer: Corey StroederSpecial thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4SocietyDr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and DentistryCopyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

AI4Society Dialogues, S2E5 - Advances in computer vision supporting diabetes research

Computer Vision is a field within artificial intelligence that is having significant impacts in medicine. Automated analysis of medical scan images can provide rich sources of insight and machine learning techniques to process this data open up a realm of possibilities for both researchers and clinicians. Dr. Nilanjan Ray is a leading researcher in computer vision, image analysis and visual recognition with deep learning. His current focus includes the application of cutting edge computer vision techniques to advance research in diabetes treatment. We talk about how he “accidentally” landed in this field, how computer vision works, the challenges of executing decision making using AI, how he is using generative adversarial networks to advance medical research (not for deep fakes!) and the role of technology in democratizing healthcare.“In order to make that kind of (diabetes) treatment available...there is almost no choice but to use AI to bring the costs down to scale up (delivery)” – Nilanjan RayDr. Nilanjan Ray is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alberta. His research is in computer vision, image analysis and visual recognition with deep learning. His work includes medical imaging and general computer vision applications including classification, recognition, semantic segmentation, object tracking, image registration and motion detection. Dr. Ray has served as General Co-chair for AI/GI/CRV conference in 2017, Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2013-2017) and IET Image Processing (2016-), reviewer for NSERC DG and CRD grants. Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health. Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AITechnical Producer: Corey StroederSpecial thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4SocietyDr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and DentistryCopyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.