About the Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute
Under the umbrella of the AI.Humanity Initiative launched by Emory Provost Ravi Bellamkonda in 2022, the Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute (AI.Health) seeks to shape the AI revolution to better human health, generate economic value, and promote social justice.
AI.Health aims to lead the way in the emerging discipline of computational medicine, with a focus on more accurately predicting response to therapy. The new institute will harness the power of machine learning and big data to transform the ways in which health care systems prevent, diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, leading the way in deploying these tools into prospective clinical trials for direct patient benefit and impact.
Scientific and medical studies show that personalized medicine is superior to the conventional one-size-fits-all approach to health care. Tailoring treatment to the individual characteristics of patients provides more effective and predictable outcomes and offers the potential to lower the overall cost of health care.
Our Mission
The Empathetic Al for Health Institute will harness the power of machine learning and big data to transform the ways in which health care systems prevent, diagnose, treat, and cure diseases. The institute will foster development of cost-effective, accessible AI tools, then serve as a translational engine to get those tools commercialized and into clinical settings where they can help patients.
The three-pronged mission of AI.Health is to innovate, deploy, and scale—to develop accessible, affordable, and equitable AI solutions, bring advances in AI and medicine to patients within Emory Healthcare, and then ultimately scale and disseminate these innovations globally.
A high-level view of what the Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute will do
Innovate
Access vast amounts of patient data via Emory Healthcare, the ATL medical ecosystem, and other partners in the US and abroad; Develop machine learning to unlock medically relevant data
Deploy
Deploy tools and technology locally within Emory Healthcare
Scale
Scale technology through translation and work with industry collaborators to disseminate it globally
Guiding Principles
Through a combination of sensitivity and pattern recognition beyond human perception, AI-based tools can analyze patient medical and tissue imaging and cross-reference vast data sets in the context of genetically and symptomatically similar cases. Diagnosing disease in earlier stages can mean more effective treatments and better patient outcomes.
There is currently a lack of effective methods to determine what therapies will work for which patients—or even whether aggressive treatment is required at all. AI can find tell-tale patterns in the vasculature and other dimensions of biopsy tissue in a digitized image and provide diagnoses and treatments that can be conducted more rapidly and at a lower cost.
AI.Health will promote health equity by increasing health care quality and access for all populations. Given precision medicine’s ability to personally tailor diagnoses and treatments, it would seem to inherently promote health equity. However, clinical trials and standard risk calculators are primarily based on a white population. Therefore, health equity must be an intentional focus of precision medicine or inequalities may worsen.
Affordable and accessible AI-based precision medicine eliminates the need to ship preserved biopsies long distances. The institute will be able to receive and analyze digital images from global health care partners. Low-cost diagnostic tools that rely on a centralized analysis hub such as AI.Health can replace more expensive screening equipment, which is not always readily available in developing or rural areas.
AI.Health operates using a hub-and-spoke model, providing unified resources across numerous centers of excellence. An advisory board works closely with leaders, offering insight and connections to propel solutions into commercially viable technology that help physicians and patients.