Winter Focused Research Program Workshop: AI in Health – Bias, Misinformation, and Social Determinants of Health

Date: Friday, March 12th
Time: 11:30am – 2:30pm EST

Workshop Overview

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning methods are expanding beyond the confines of scientific investigation and, increasingly, finding uses in several societal functions. In health and healthcare, AI methods are being used to develop predictive models of disease, improve healthcare operations, and offer physician diagnostic and decision support. AI models are typically trained using large datasets, compiled from Electronic Health Records, wearable devices, and medical imaging. An emerging concern is that AI models, relying simply on available data, and being completely agnostic to equity and fairness considerations, may internalize various forms of biases in the data. This can lead to accentuating disparities in health care, disadvantaging specific racial groups and amplifying the role of social determinants of health. In this workshop we will explore a number of these threads, seeking to understand how AI models can become biased and how they could also help identifying and mitigating such biases. 

The workshop is open to FRP faculty members and their students. If you are interested in participating but are not currently part of this FRP, please contact Katherine D’Angelo (ktd@bu.edu) for more information.

This workshop will be virtual and held via Zoom Meeting.

11:30am – 11:35am – Welcome
11:35am – 12:05 pm – Kate Saenko, PhD, Dataset Bias and Domain Adaptation in Computer Vision
12:05pm – 12:35pm – Pablo Buitron de la Vega, MD, The Thrive Program and the role of Social Determinants of Health for patients at the Boston Medical Center
12:35pm -12:50pm – Break
12:50pm -1:15pm – Shahabeddin Sotudian (with Y. Paschalidis, M. Fishman, C. Lebedis, A. Afran, and A. Rives), Social Determinants of Health and Their Effects on Predicting Missed Imaging Appointments
1:15pm -1:40pm – Yuping Wang (with G. Stringhini, M. Betke, N. Cesare, L. Guo, E. Nsoesie, C. Su, D. Wijaya, Y. Zhang), Potential Biases in Measuring Health Misinformation on Social Media
1:40pm – 1:55pm – Break
1:55pm – 2:30pm – Discussion