UF College of Medicine hosts second annual AI4Health conference
The conference April 22-24 explored AI topics relating to health, ethical, and legal fields
May 14, 2024 — The second annual AI4Health: Improving Health Through Artificial Intelligence conference was held April 22-24 at the Disney Yacht Club in Orlando, showcasing the most recent research in medical AI and providing a forum for researchers to discuss its implications for improving health.
In just the last year, the University of Florida’s advances in AI and medicine have surged, as evidenced by the inclusion of the biomedical AI collaborative in the new Malachowsky Hall and by UF president Ben Sasse’s $2 million strategic funding toward the Intelligent Virtual Hospital project. The UF-led AI4Health 2024 invited attendees to view AI through a multitude of health-related lenses, from legal and ethical issues to applications in precision medicine and quality improvement.
More than 200 attendees traveled from across Florida and from as far away as California and Quebec to attend the event, which invited clinicians, researchers, and trainees to explore how AI-enabled discoveries will change clinical practice and improve patients’ health. The conference provided continuing medical education, or CME, credit to qualifying attendees and offered virtual and in-person viewing options to provide accessible and hybrid opportunities for engagement.
Pre-conference workshop
Activities began April 21 at the UF Academic and Research Center at Lake Nona with the AI for Clinical Care Workshop hosted by the NIH Bridge2AI and CHoRUS Network in collaboration with the UF College of Medicine, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, Intelligent Clinical Care Center and NVIDIA. Also in its second year, the workshop provided hands-on training and professional development in AI for a diverse group of trainees, physicians, and early-stage investigators. The workshop offered two tracks, with content for beginners, without coding experience, and advanced users.
“Many people don’t have a lot of experience with coding, so we’ve removed the hardcore part of the workshop and made it more digestible for people so they can have a specific takeaway, which is how to use AI in their work,” said Ricardo Diaz-Rincon, a Ph.D. student in the department of neuroscience, who was a teacher assistant for the beginner track.
Python programming notebooks that showed how AI and machine learning apply to real-world clinical datasets guided beginner trainees such as Catherine Javellana, an employee at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System, who wanted to learn more about what tools are available for protecting Veterans Affairs health data behind an internet firewall.
Attendees participated in a pre-conference workshop April 21 at the UF Academic and Research Center at Lake Nona.
“This gives me a better idea of what VA staff need to upskill to get more comfortable with the data,” Javellana said. “AI requires an interdisciplinary team; you can’t rely on one person. There are a lot of people who come together to handle the data.”
Trainees in the advanced track worked with instructors from NVIDIA, who discussed generative AI and diffusion models, technologies that create new content based on user prompts. Kaleb Smith, a senior data scientist for NVIDIA’s higher education team and the site lead for the NVIDIA AI Technology Center at UF, said last year’s focus was on AI in medical imaging; now, large-language models such as ChatGPT that create a response based on a user command have taken the spotlight.
“It’s gone really well,” Smith said about participant success. “They’re doing a phenomenal job grasping the technology and concepts and are already seeing where they could apply it to their research.”
Azra Bihorac, M.D., M.S., the senior associate dean for research at the UF College of Medicine and director of the Intelligent Clinical Care Center, welcomes conference-goers April 22.
Day 1
Attendees arrived for AI4Health late Sunday evening and early Monday morning, shaking off their travel weariness at the serene Disney Yacht Club. Azra Bihorac, M.D., M.S., the senior associate dean for research at the UF College of Medicine and director of the Intelligent Clinical Care Center, welcomed conference-goers before introducing keynote speaker Karandeep Singh, M.D., the inaugural chief health AI officer at the University of California San Diego. Singh spoke on the use of large-language models for addressing clinical and operational questions.
The day continued with talks on AI health ethics and legalities, as well as entrepreneurial opportunities for scientists looking to accelerate their research findings. It concluded with an outdoor reception, where clinicians, researchers, students, and other health professionals chatted about their AI experiences.
Day 2
Sessions on AI applications discussing topics such as neuroscience and wearable devices captivated audience members throughout the day, with individuals coming from a variety of scientific backgrounds and career stages, as well as different questions and purposes.
“I hoped to learn about the broad applications of AI methodologies,” said Arianna Issitt, a graduate student in computer engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology. “I prefer to work in medical AI eventually and I’ve only gotten a narrow view of some of the applications.”
Attendees including Issitt were privy to the latest breakthroughs in AI’s use for fields such as radiology, digital pathology, and spatial biology. A special lunchtime session introduced the UF President’s Strategic Initiative Intelligent Hospital Digital Twin: Hospital Metaverse, a partnership between the Intelligent Clinical Care Center, Mark III Systems, and NVIDIA that will harness AI, pervasive sensing, and immersive technologies within the hospital digital twin to improve health care in Florida.
Day 2 capped off with a poster session for researchers to share research findings aided by AI-based tools.
Participants present research posters on April 23.
Day 3
Patrick Tighe, M.D., M.S., the executive director of the Quality and Patient Safety initiative at UF, kicks off the last day of the conference April 24.
Other sessions included talks on AI for resilience engineering and runtime in computer programming, as well as progress of projects funded in part by the Rapid AI Prototyping and Development for Patient Safety, or RAPiDS, grants from the Office of the Dean at the UF College of Medicine.
Tiffani-Amber Miller, M.D., M.P.H., a resident in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UF, contributed to one such project as an author on the paper titled, “Improving Maternal Health by Addressing Social Needs.”
Co-authored with Adetola Louis-Jacques, M.D., a clinical assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, the study aimed to collect and analyze data on the social determinants of health of expectant mothers in Gainesville using AI tools to improve maternal health issues.
“AI is helping to address needs that have not been highlighted before,” Miller said. “This is a way we can home in on our patients’ needs. There are a lot of biases that form social determinants of health, so AI is doing the opposite, where it’s helping to mitigate some of these biases.”
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