Overview

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Further Information

Fondation Botnar is a proud supporter of the ITU/WHO Focus Group on “Artificial Intelligence for Health” (FG-AI4H). 

FG-AI4H is composed of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning specialists, healthcare practitioners and researchers, regulators, ethicists, and social scientists. The Focus Group is developing a framework through which AI solutions for health can be tested in a standardized manner to ensure that they are safe for patient use. To achieve this objective, FG-AI4H has topic groups representing various areas of health that could benefit from AI solutions. These include: cardiovascular disease risk prediction, dermatology, falls among the elderly, histopathology, neurological disorders, outbreak detection, ophthalmology, psychiatry, snakebite and snake identification, symptom assessment, tuberculosis, volumetric chest computed tomography, diagnoses of bacterial infection and anti-microbial resistance, dental diagnostics, detection of falsified medicine, mother and child health, malaria detection, and radiotherapy. Working groups dedicated to overarching themes (e.g., data and AI solution methods/handling, regulatory considerations) provide support to the topic group operations. To learn more about the topic groups, working groups, and FG-AI4H activities, please visit the website and read the comment in The Lancet. 

FG-AI4H holds workshops/meetings every two months. Participation in the workshops/meetings is open to all and free-of-charge. The workshop provides an opportunity to engage with local stakeholders and to learn about local-to-regional health priorities. The subsequent meeting is used to monitor Focus Group progress, to identify challenges, and to find solutions. 

Past workshops/meetings have been located in New York, U.S.A.; Lausanne, Switzerland; Shanghai, China; Geneva, Switzerland; Zanzibar, Tanzania; and New Delhi, India.

Upcoming workshops/meetings will be in Brasilia, Brazil (21-24 January 2020); Singapore, Singapore (16-20 March 2020); and Geneva, Switzerland (4-8 May 2020).

Fondation Botnar sees the importance of FG-AI4H and its discussions as critical to integrating the views of diverse local and global stakeholders through a platform approach that can inform the future standardization and benchmarking of AI-enabled solutions for health. For such discussions to be truly meaningful, they need to be inclusive, bringing in perspectives and experiences from low- and middle-income countries, including from healthcare providers, regulators, consumers, researchers, start-ups, data scientists, and the private sector.

We are therefore calling for broad participation in the upcoming workshops/meetings. Involvement can include attending, joining a topic group, submitting a proposal for a new topic group, or giving a presentation in your area of expertise. For questions, please contact tsbevents@itu.int.