Jan. 29, 2024
Dr. Shyam Visweswaran, MD, PhD (SCI '06), a professor with Pitt's Department of Biomedical Informatics, spoke at the Dean’s Spotlight Series 2024 on Jan. 25, beginning the speaker series with his talk “Towards Development of AI-based Clinical Decision Support.”
With the increases in medical knowledge, patient data, and documentation in the healthcare field, clinicians are increasingly overwhelmed with task management. Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled clinical decision support (CDS) aids clinicians in tasks such as patient data collection, documentation, scribing, ordering, and billing.
“AI has the promise to aid the physician at the point of care so that they can provide accurate, reliable, and consistent care,” said Visweswaran. “There is a great need to develop and use robust frameworks to evaluate AI-CDS so that they are safe and reliable when deployed.”
Visweswaran also discussed potential algorithmic biases due to race and how they could be addressed in AI-CDS systems. Since clinical algorithms that use race as a factor may result in biased decision-making, it is vital to assess these factors when developing new AI algorithms in healthcare.
“My group is developing and applying AI methods to mitigate racial bias in clinical algorithms that perform differentially across racial subpopulations. We need more collaborations among clinical experts, AI scientists, and informaticians to develop safe, ethical, and reliable AI-CDS systems,” said Visweswaran.
Visweswaran was appointed to the National Institute of Health (NIH) Clinical Informatics and Digital Health Study Section for a four-year term. There, he gets to further his research and review some of the most cutting-edge AI-CDS science.
“Interdisciplinary collaboration is critical in today's complex and rapidly changing world, and many of the most pressing challenges, such as applying AI to medicine, necessitate close collaboration between engineers, AI experts, physicians, health policy experts, and informaticians,” remarked Visweswaran. “Research is a dynamic process, and you may encounter challenges along the way. Persistence, curiosity, and a commitment to rigor are key to conducting meaningful and impactful research.”
This talk was sponsored by the Intelligent Systems Program. Watch a recording of the talk here!
--Alyssa Morales
Pictured left to right: Dr. Peter Brusilovsky, director, Intelligent Systems Program; Dr. Shyam Visweswaran; Dean Bruce R. Childers, dean and professor