Accelerating Health and Healthcare Innovation with Human-Centric AI

The AI + Health focus at the Institute for Experiential AI is advancing health and healthcare innovation with human-centric AI by building on Northeastern University’s global network and rich history of use-inspired research.

The focus area was created to leverage the Institute’s deep expertise in human-centered AI to transform how we manage health and deliver care. It is led by Director Gene Tunik, who is also the associate dean of research and innovation at the Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University.

Tunik believes AI holds enormous potential to improve research, diagnostics, clinical decision making, operational efficiencies, and more. He has spent his career working at the intersection of clinical research, neuroscience and engineering, where he has witnessed AI connect the work being done in research labs with what's practiced in health clinics.

The AI + Health team collaborates with partner organizations across research, product development, data analytics, education, talent acquisition, ethics, and other areas to build AI solutions that improve health and healthcare, including projects in:

1. Remote sensing for the prediction of adverse events, disease onset, outcomes, reductions in hospital stays, and many other relevant real-time health outcomes
2. Behavioral and mental health work to optimize equitable access to healthcare, detect mental health issues from data from sources including social media platforms, and support mental health and aging in place through social robotics
3. Imaging and diagnostics including digital pathology, MR/XRay imaging, and other modalities for efficient, accurate and automated disease detection
4. Operational efficiencies in healthcare for cost reduction, patient triaging, scheduling, billing assistance and related operations‍
   

The AI + Health team is comprised of experts in AI, machine learning, ethics, healthcare, data science, human-computer interaction and more. The multidisciplinary team has experience working with clinicians, healthcare organizations, industry partners, and academia at all stages to engage in research discovery and to solve real-world problems.

“Our future health depends on flipping the healthcare model from reactive to proactive,” Tunik says. “Half of the global population currently lacks access to essential health services, especially preventive care. At AI + Health, we ask, ‘How can we better use sensing technology and data to fuel AI/ML algorithms to best capture health concerns before they become health crises, supporting better health for people of all ages and backgrounds? How can we achieve healthy aging in place, keeping individuals in their homes with their families and communities?’”

As healthcare gets more complex, the world population grows, and the number of clinicians shrinks, Tunik says AI will become ever more important.

With each of its focus areas, the Institute for Experiential AI is building off of Northeastern's robust talent pipeline, close industry partnerships, and history of delivering solutions at a speed and scale unprecedented in academia.

Join us as we harness the combined power of applied AI, research, an experiential learning model and cutting-edge data science to advance healthcare innovation and create a healthier, more equitable future.  Get started on a project today!

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