Bringing together UK’s UKRI Doctoral Training Centres in AI for Health

UKRI AI for Healthcare Centre (AI4Health) led first edition of the joint conference bringing together UKRI Doctoral Training Centres in AI for Health

In early Summer 2022, the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Healthcare (AI4Health CDT) called for Britain’s first conference bringing together the four UKRI AI CDTs doing research in the domain of AI for patient care and health. This conference was an amazing opportunity for the UKRI AI CDTs to work collaboratively, promote and share scientific exchange between doctoral students across the UK, and strengthen collaborative research in the wider area of AI for health, and was the first of its kind. Furthermore, this event created a platform for AI researchers to continue discussions and collaborations which feed into UKRI's vision to support transformational AI research and activities to realise the vast potential of AI to transform our world for the better, including the area of health and patient care.  

The participating UKRI Centres included

o   UKRI CDT in AI-enabled Healthcare Systems at University College London, @cdt_ai_health

o   UKRI CDT in AI for Medical Diagnosis and Care at Leeds University, @LeedsMedAI_CDT    

o   UKRI CDT in Biomedical AI at Edinburgh University, @BioMedAI_CDT 

o   CDT AI for Healthcare at Imperial College London, @AI4HealthCentre, lead organiser

The 2-day conference offered a varied programme, including a keynote presentation, poster presentations and spotlight talks of the top abstracts, selected by the conference panel.

The keynote was presented by guest speaker, Maria Liakata, Professor in Natural Language Processing (NLP) at Queen Mary, University of London. Her keynote was on #NLP with longitudinal personalised language models for mental health applications.

Exciting proceedings of the #CAI4H 2022 included the celebration of the three prizes for Best CAI4H Posters and one prize for the Best Spotlight Talk. The Best three posters were awarded to:

-N. Aizaan Anwar, MD, from Imperial College’s UKRI CDT AI for Healthcare (AI4Health CDT) for her Brain App Study. Using Near-patient Sensing through a mobile app & machine learning in brain tumour patients.

-Isabel Straw, MD, from UCL’s UKRI CDT in AI-enabled Healthcare systems for her Disaster medicine & AI study: Improving predictive modelling of human disaster behaviour with machine learning.

-and Joseph Farrington, from the CDT in AI-enabled Healthcare Systems at UCL for his work on AI-enabled Blood Transfusion System Student.

The prize of Best Spotlight Talk was awarded to Digby Chappell, PhD researcher at the UKRI CDT AI for Healthcare, Imperial College London. His talk explained new Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand Control, investigating the control of prosthetic hands from a holistic point of view: control, user training, and haptic feedback.

Finally, PhD researchers from all participating centres showcased their research in three posters sessions. The poster showcases created an exciting buzz for discussion, collaborations, and idea exchange.

CDT researchers, guests and speakers much enjoyed coming together in person after a long period of online events. Everyone enjoyed the high scientific quality of the posters and talks, and are looking forward to the next joint conference of Britain’s UKRI AI CDTs in Health in 2023.