Data Science in Healthcare workshop attracts audience from Industry, Academia and beyond
The LIV.INNO CDT has hosted a workshop on Data Science in Healthcare and Health Technologies. Taking place in Liverpool’s Spine building, over 40 people from across industry, academia and the NHS to accepted invitations to attend and contribute to a day of seminars and fruitful discussions. LIV.INNO were happy to welcome current partners, as well as many new organisations.
Prof Welsch welcoming the delegates.
The workshop commenced with a welcome and introduction from Prof Carsten Welsch, Director of the LIV.INNO CDT. Katherine Robertson and Phil Carvil then introduced the North West Health Cluster, and outlined the STFC facilities and funding available to support research in this area. Nicolas Nunn next discussed how the University’s Enterprise Team help researchers achieve research impact. Closing the opening session, LIV.INNO Data Science Fellow Alex Hill outlined LIV.INNO’s existing partnerships. He focused on the current collaboration with Adaptix Ltd, which includes joint-funded PhD studentships and recently celebrated a £400k STFC late-stage commercialisation grant.
Phil Carvil introducing the North West Health Cluster.
Later in the morning, Yalda Ashraf Kharaz from Health Data Research UK talked about NHS data access, and opportunities in its use to improve outcomes for patients. Alder Hey’s Head of Data Science, Olufemi Olajide, next spoke about the large number of issues within the NHS, which can be improved greatly using data science as a tool. This was further emphasised by neurosurgeon Deepti Bhargava of the Walton Centre, who explained how data science can enhance techniques used in neurorestoration, a process that helps recover neurological function in patients with both overactive and underactive neurological conditions. Finally, Jane Shortall of the University of Manchester spoke about the application of Gaussian Processes to augment incomplete datasets to improve early detection of recurrent prostate cancer.
Delegates at the meeting.
Attendees had the opportunity to discuss key data science challenges and opportunities in healthcare. Groups were formed with a mix of backgrounds to ensure engaging conversations and the identification of opportunities for collaboration. The topics were:
- trustworthy and explainable AI for clinical decision support
- patient-specific digital twins
- Physics informed Machine Learning
- synthetic data generation and validation standards
A summary of each can be found on the workshop’s Indico site.
Discussion session during the workshop.
The workshop’s closing session featured contributions from medtech innovators who have their roots in academia. CCI photonics CEO Carlos Meza detailed how AI can be used to speed up bacterial infection diagnosis, and therefore improve outcomes for patients. Head of Core Lab Operations at MyCardium, Chloe Bickerstaff, highlighted their use of AI in rapidly assessing cardiac scans. Finally, LYEONS CEO, Lucy Jung, introduced burgeoning work in the development of devices to predict and prevent panic attacks.
The workshop received lots of positive feedback from participants. Prof Carsten Welsch said “It was fantastic to see such an engaged group come together to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in healthcare. This workshop exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary collaboration, and I am excited to see how the new partnerships and ideas formed today will shape future innovation in LIV.INNO”.
The presentations made at this workshop can be found on the workshop Indico site