Advancing Health Equity and Access using Responsible AI

Zoom link for remote participants, passcode:  860476

Abstract:  The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront decades of inequities in healthcare. These inequities lower life expectancy, hinder accessible healthcare, and reduce the quality of care for disadvantaged populations.In this talk, I will highlight some unique opportunities for AI to improve access to health, mitigate disparities, and modernize healthcare with novel methods (e.g., tele health). In particular,I will expand on three different processes:1)How do we translate AI into clinical care while engaging all the stakeholders to provide a practical solution that end-users, clinicians, and patients all find value in?2)How can we leverage AI to collect high-quality and population-representative input data outside the lab/clinic?3)How do we utilize multimodal data to produce accurate, generalizable, and unbiased results in healthcare, as well as validate them by incorporating them into the clinician’s practices?I will provide examples of how these principles have helped us to design technologies that can screen for Parkinson’s Disease—the fastest growing neurological disability—using a webcam, enable doctors to improve empathy and listening skills as they help terminally ill patients make critical decisions, or develop the social skills of individuals who struggle with socio-emotional communication, such as those with autism while being mindful of access and equity.

Bio:  Ehsan Hoque is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Rochester, where he co-leads the Rochester Human-Computer Interaction (ROC HCI) Group. Ehsan and his group are best known for introducing and extensively validating the idea of using AI to train and enhance elements of basic human ability. In 2018-2019, as the Interim Director of The Goergen Institute for Data Science, he helped establish the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence forParkinson’s Disease Research at the University of Rochester.The work done by Ehsan’s group has been recognized by NSF CAREER Award, MIT TR35,Young Investigator Award by the US Army Research Office (ARO). In 2017, Science News named him one of the 10 scientists to watch, and in 2020, the National Academy of Medicine recognized him as one of the emerging leaders in health and medicine. Ehsan earned his Ph.D.from MIT in 2013