Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the Heart of Health

Konstantina Nikita, Ph.D., M.D., is a full Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens. She is director of the Mobile Radiocommunications Laboratory and founder and director of the Biomedical Simulations and Imaging (BIOSIM) Laboratory. Since 2015, she is Irene McCulloch Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California. She has been the technical manager of 60 European and National R&D projects on fundamental research and practical applications. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation and a member of the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Computing. She has been Chair of the program/organizing committee of more than 50 international conferences and has served as keynote speaker at several international conferences and symposia. She has been the advisor of 30 completed Ph.D. theses, several of which have received various awards. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Founding Fellow of the European Association of Medical and Biological Engineering and Science (EAMBES), and a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She serves as chair of the LS7 Consolidator Grant Panel of the European Research Council (ERC), for granting investigator-driven frontier research in the domain of life sciences. She is the author of the book “Handbook of Biomedical Telemetry” and of more than 180 journal publications, and 350 conference proceedings papers. She holds three patents. She has received various awards, among which the Bodossakis Foundation Academic Prize (2003) for exceptional achievements in “Theory and Applications of Information Technology in Medicine”.

Τhe talk will focus on the impressive evolution of AI and the unique opportunities it unravels for Health. From hospital care to clinical research, drug discovery and health insurance, AI applications are expected to radically impact healthcare, reducing costs and improving patient care. What prospects are opened up through large-scale data aggregation, increased computational power, and improved algorithm performance? How does the transformative power of AI expand from self-care to hospital care, from prediction, prevention and diagnosis to effective disease treatment? Which challenges need to be addressed so that AI systems are aligned with human value requirements, with the ultimate goal of securing health and wellness.  In this talk, we will discuss various aspects of the AI healthcare landscape by presenting state-of-the-art AI-empowered solutions that enable informed, more accurate diagnosis, timely prognosis, and effective treatment planning, underpinning precision medicine. An overview of different contemporary and emerging AI algorithmic methods for disease modelling will be provided, focusing on machine learning and deep learning architectures, that have already become the de facto approach in a variety of healthcare applications. Personal health systems that leverage these approaches for the early detection, assessment and effective management of highly prevalent diseases, ranging from diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease to neurological disorders, will be outlined. The talk will highlight the challenges, limitations, and best practices for the development, adoption, and maintenance of AI systems in healthcare, by placing emphasis on the concept of model transparency, that state-of the-art interpretability and explainability methods can realize. Enhancing human understanding, maximizing user trust, and ensuring ethically aligned systems can pave the way for the true adoption of AI in clinical practice.