AI’s future role in health care

Published on: July 25, 2024 By: Staff Reports

6 men and 5 women gathered in front of a colorful art display with a blue sign on an easle with name of gathering. — The Inaugural UT System AI Symposium in Health Care brought together experts representing all University of Texas health institutions on the UT Southwestern campus to discuss how artificial intelligence can effectively and ethically transform health care. Organizing committee members gathering for a photo include, from left: Edward Sankary, M.D., Chief Health Informatics Officer, Regional Physician Network for UT Health San Antonio; Igor Zwir, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neuroscience at UTRGV School of Medicine; Kevin Lutz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at UTSW; Andrea Cooley, D.O., FACOS, Assistant Professor of Medical Education at UT Tyler School of Medicine; Yang Xie, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Data Sciences at UTSW; Joan Conaway, Ph.D., Vice Provost and Dean of Basic Research at UTSW; Eric Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., Vice Provost and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research at UTSW; Hongfang Liu, Ph.D., Vice President of Learning Health System, UTHealth Houston; Eric Martinez M.S., Assistant Director of Business Intelligence and Enterprise Engineering, UTRGV School of Medicine; Ying Ding, Ph.D., Bill & Lewis Suit Professor at School of Information, UT Austin; and Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, UT Austin.

Hundreds of scientists, physicians, educators, and students representing all University of Texas health institutions came together in late May to examine the future of artificial intelligence and its ability to positively transform health care in the most effective, ethical ways. The Inaugural UT System AI Symposium in Health Care took place on the UT Southwestern campus May 30-31. It included keynote addresses, panel discussions, poster sessions, and short plenary talks as well as a joint introduction from UT System Executive Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs John M. Zerwas, M.D., and UT Southwestern President Daniel K. Podolsky, M.D.

View images from this historic event below and watch recap videos of some of the sessions available at this page. For more in-depth coverage of the Symposium, read the story.

Select an image to begin the slideshow.

Members of the Industry and Academic Partnership panel discuss how their respective organizations use AI and cloud computing to transform health care and life science research. From left: Russell Poole, M.B.A, Vice President of Information Resources and Chief Information Officer at UT Southwestern; Dr. Peterson; David C. Rhew, M.D., Global Chief Medical Officer and VP of Healthcare at Microsoft; Christine Tsien Silvers, M.D., Ph.D., Healthcare Executive Advisor at Amazon Web Services; Alexander “Sasha” Sicular, Executive Lead of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Google Public Sector; Amar Yousif, M.B.A., Vice President and CIO at UTHealth Houston; and Tyler Rorabaugh, Distinguished Researcher at Palo Alto Networks.

W. P. Andrew Lee, M.D., Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of UT Southwestern Medical School, introduces John Zerwas, M.D., Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs for the University of Texas System.

Keynote speaker Nigam Shah, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., Chief Data Scientist at Stanford Health Care, addresses the challenges in responsibly adopting AI into health care practices.

Peter Stone, Ph.D., Truchard Foundation Chair in Computer Science and University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UT Austin, shares his outlook of AI’s potential impact on scientific research and technology in his keynote address.

From left, Dr. Zerwas, UTSW President Daniel K. Podolsky, M.D., and Texas Sen. Tan Parker, District 12, talk about how AI can benefit health care and advance research in Texas.

UT Southwestern’s Steve Jiang, Ph.D., Vice Chair of Digital Health and AI, left, and Dr. Xie share how UTSW researchers are using artificial intelligence to enhance efficiency and safety in the clinic.

Panelists on the Innovations, Tech Transfers, and Collaborations with Vendors session discussing AI strategies include, from left: Mark Arnold, Associate Vice President for Discovery to Impact, UT Austin; Kal Clark, M.D., Clinical Vice Chair of Informatics, UT Health San Antonio; and Isamu Hartman, Ph.D., M.B.A., Assistant Director of Technology Commercialization, UTSW.

Panelists on the AI Across the UT Health System session include, from left: Sen. Parker, Dr. Shah, and Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D., Dean of Dell Medical School and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at UT Austin.

Attendees of the AI Symposium take part in breakout sessions to address the opportunities and risks of using artificial intelligence in health care.

From left: Symposium team members Diana DiLolle, Senior Program Coordinator, Office of the Provost; Jennifer Azares, Executive Assistant to Dr. Lee; Michael Baker, Manager of Clinical Sciences – Academic Affairs; and Mikki Norris, Executive Assistant, Office of the Provost; share the latest UT Southwestern research report at the registration desk.

UT Southwestern students and fellows browse recent AI research from the UT Health System at the poster session.

Industry and Academic Partnership panel members Dr. Peterson, left, and Dr. Rhew consider how collaboration among industry, academia, and hospitals will be essential to the advancement of health care in the coming years.

UT Southwestern’s Yingzi Zhang, left, a Nurse Scientist, and Calandra Jones, a Clinical Research Coordinator II, present their research on the efficacy of using natural language processing (NLP) to summarize patient notes.

UTSW medical student Angelo Scanio, left, presents his research on the use of AI in diagnosis of osteoporosis to Naim Maalouf, M.D., Director of the Charles and Jane Pak Center of Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research at UT Southwestern.

Ameer Hamza Shakur, Ph.D., a Software Engineer in the Jamieson Lab at UTSW, tells Dr. Peterson about his research that involves using large language models to grade medical student exams.