Bringing AI into the real world of healthcare

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recently awarded internationally recognised informatics expert Professor Enrico Coiera $1.5 million for the project: Bringing artificial intelligence into the real world of healthcare – the implementation challenge. The five-year research program will focus on three foundational challenges to bringing artificial intelligence (AI) into the clinical world.

To ensure AI is safe, the three challenges which will be addressed through the research are:

1. optimal mechanisms for surveillance and governance of AI safety
2. the lack of genuine independent testing of claims for the benefits of AI
3. clinical AI that is performing well in one setting may not be repeated in even closely related settings.

“The funding will bring a much-needed boost to AI-focussed healthcare research. I’ll be hiring soon to grow our team and solve these critical issues for AI in healthcare,” said Professor Coiera.

Professor Coiera has worked in health informatics for over three decades and has a wide range of interests in the application of information and communication technologies (eHealth, Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence in Health) to solving health service delivery problems. He emphasises the importance of working on inpatient clinical problems, as well as developing robust theoretical work to support the applied nature of much of this discipline.

Read more.