AI in Pediatrics Mini-Symposium Recap
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, in conjunction with Emory University’s AI.Health hosted a mini-symposium on March 25. The event, titled “AI in Peds,” aimed at addressing the uniqueness of pediatric research and bespoke clinical applications. The event approached the current bottlenecks and welcomed discussions regarding developing a strong roadmap for AI in pediatric research.
Dr. Satish Viswanath, Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering at Emory University, kicked off the afternoon with a warm welcome message, followed by opening remarks from Kristy Murray, DVM, PhD, who serves as Chief Research Officer for CHOA and leads the Children’s and Emory pediatric research enterprise.
Following Murray, our keynote speaker, Dr. James Zou, from Stanford University and the lead of the Stanford AI for Science Lab, presented his revolutionary research findings that intersect with human diseases and health. Following his presentation, Dr. Zou was met with a flurry of questions, all of which he insightfully answered. Afterwards, he proclaimed, “It was a very lively discussion. It was one of the more lively symposiums I’ve been to. I would love to come back.”
Attendee Brittany Morris, who serves as the Manager of Clinical Operations for CHOA’s inpatient pediatric rehab, found Dr. Zou’s presentation extremely eye-opening,
“It's very exciting to hear from James from Stanford. We work in a very niche field, and are sitting on a data mine of information, but we don't know how to optimize it. To know that there are possibilities out there of what we could do with the data for our kids is very exciting.”
Another attendee, Siddharth Balakrishan, a research engineer in Dr. Satsish Viswanath’s lab, believes that attending multidisciplinary events is crucial in expanding his breadth of knowledge as a researcher. “Just being here, you learn a lot about many different backgrounds. Learning about the chat agents that Dr. Zou mentioned was very insightful because it could be applied to many things in the biomedical field.”
After the break, attendees were met with a new activity: breakout discussions. The activity allowed attendees to apply their new pediatric knowledge with their backgrounds to craft a roadmap for pediatric AI solutions and potential implementation. The discussions were facilitated by Anna Alfrod, Manoj Bhasin, Stephanie Brown, Tim Gershon, Neil Lall, Evan Orenstein, Naveen Muthu, and David Wolf.
Following the breakout discussion sessions, attendees presented summaries of their findings and key takeaways.
The event concluded with closing remarks from AI.Health’s Executive Director, Dr. Anant Madabhushi, and Dr. Satish Viswanath.
Those interested in learning more about the symposium or following the ongoing work of the AI.Health Institute can stay connected on Instagram at @emoryaihealth, on Facebook @Emory Aihealth, and on LinkedIn @Emory AI.Health.