Bo Wang, whose expertise at the Toronto-based University Health Network includes machine learning and computational biology, is stepping into the role after the launch of UHN’s AI Hub earlier this year. The hospital network says the hub brings together doctors and researchers who work with AI in areas including cancer and cardiovascular disease.
UHN is not alone in its exploration of AI uses in health care. Other hospitals across Canada have been using the technology in limited ways, such as for analyzing the results of medical scans, with oversight from radiologists. As a founding member of a Mayo Clinic data network in the United States, UHN would also have access to data sets from other countriesincluding Israel and Brazil, he said.
However, the so-called generative AI model, still under development with researchers from the University of Toronto and McGill University in Montreal, needs improvements to make it more reliable. And Health Canada would have to approve the software to ensure accuracy and safety so it does not make wrong predictions about a diagnosis, said Wang, adding the regulator would also have to be satisfied that patient privacy is protected.
UHN says it hopes to expand on the narrow AI applications already being used at its hospitals. At Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, for example, radiation treatment times have been slashed by nearly half in some cases, based on a predictive model built from UHN data on patient recovery after treatment, response to certain drugs and survival times, Wang said.