IEEE Healthcare: Blockchain & AI

Introduction to the virtual series, genesis of this new directions, highlights and timeline of the course of the series.

Overview

Blockchain & AI for Healthcare overview, brief intro of the technologies for health, discussion of convergence, and focus on the power of these combined applications.
 

José Arrieta is the former U.S. Health and Human Services Chief Information Officer and acting Chief Data Officer. He delivered the first live enterprise application of blockchain combined with AI in the U.S. federal government, and has been one of the most recognized leaders (in both vision and action) in recent years for emerging technology applied to healthcare. In this session he’ll shift his focus to the potential global impact that this brings to the field.
 

Holistic look at blockchain and AI applications for medical devices and related research, insights into what is possible now and in the near future, introduction to the tracks.
 

A look at the management and continuous integration of heterogeneous biomedical data, including aspects of trust, identity, privacy, protection, safety, ethics, quality, sharing, transparency, data assets, permission, consent and more.

The dominant characteristic of our current healthcare industry is its compartmentalized, disintegrated business model; one manifestation of which is the accretion of massive volumes of data from disparate sources that must be harmonized at great effort in order to be of use for analytic modeling and augmented decision support. Healthcare, wellness, and society in many ways have become victims of the very information created to serve them in this domain. In a medical system where consumer trust, practitioner burnout, and generalized (average) and intuitive care protocols dominate, the future of a functional model that provides access to personalized interactions and outcomes is most directly confronted by the challenge of curating and acting on relevant data, in-the-moment.

Our thesis is that there are three dimensions of managing actionable information that when symbiotically networked together, form the fulcrum from which to pivot all advancements on behalf of a healthier society.
 

A look at the critical aspects of automated process governing across these systems which capture the intent, requirements and coordination across all stakeholders from patients to industry.

To explore the governance challenges of ecosystems deploying blockchain and AI, this track will explore the role of governance in successful partnerships. Defined generously by Wiki as “The term for the way a group of people such as a country [or healthcare providers] do things,” governance includes a number of open-ended concerns. Just what are the challenges for healthcare providers that need new, governance-enabled collaborative models?
 

A look at medical devices cybersecurity, authentication, life cycle management, monitoring and more.

It is critical that the design manufacturing operation of medical devices that doctors and patients rely on operate as intended which sometimes require long validation and approval cycles. Once approved, it is also challenging to ensure that components are manufactured and tested according to specs.

How can emerging technologies like DLTs and AI be leveraged to address some of these challenges? For instance, can the use of blockchain enhance the supply chain robustness by adding an easier traceability and transparency mechanism? Is it possible to reduce the approval process of a medical device using these technologies?

Another aspect is the trusted and reliable connection and operation of the device. Can these technologies be leveraged to mitigate cybersecurity risks?
 

A look at real world applications of internet of medical things (Non-regulated, 510k, PMA devices; Prescribed vs. Over-The-Counter; Clinical Use vs. Remote Use; Clinical Trials Support: Imaging; Genomics; Physiologic) and EHR Interoperability.

The use of wearable devices in healthcare ranging from smart watches to smart glasses will impact disease prevention, detection and influencing precautionary measures. Advances in modern technologies, such as, Internet of Medical Things, 5G, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence have played a role in ensuring the viability of healthcare wearables. However, several challenges related to security and privacy need to be resolved for fully maximizing the use of these wearable devices.
 

A focus on the related standards and development process relating to blockchain and AI in healthcare and the harmonization of the same.
 

Closing Remarks – Gora Datta & Heather Flannery
 

Drummond Reed presents: The Trust Over IP Stack: A New Tool for Digital Identity & Trusted Data in Healthcare

Patient Digital Biomedical Data Files with 3D Topological Mapping of Macroanatomy and Microanatomy for Use in Big Data and Augmented Intelligence Systems
 

Blockchain based solutions are not the future: they are happening today. This session will go through the first use cases in production in the Life Science industry and what capabilities this enables that were not possible before with standard technologies. From this, we will review what the future holds for how companies will do business together and how the management of data and transactions between companies will bring new business models for medical devices and beyond.
 

Closing Remarks by Mike McCoy, Sean Manion, and Gora Datta

• Debbie Bucci
• Michael Glickman
• John Greaves

Wrap up from Session #3 and a special preview of the next virtual session coming on Feb 3rd 2021: Ethics, “what’s that got to do with it?” Dr Sean Manion will introduce the topic of ethical application of AI algorithms.
 

There is a robust history of ethical challenges and solutions in healthcare and health research. Drawing from historical atrocities in human experimentation, the Belmont Report released in the 1970s outlined a framework for ethical behavior in human subjects research. This framework, which underlies laws and regulations that govern medical research, may apply to many of the health-related AI projects using iterative machine learning to create generalizable algorithms.

• Wendy Charles, PhD
• Tamiko Eto, MS, CIP
• Nicole Tay, MPH

• Tiffany Gray, DrPH, MPH
• John Greaves
• Dr. Denise McCurdy

PANELISTS

• Heather Flannery
• Pierre Vigilance, MD, MPH
• Gisele Waters, PhD
• Samson Williams

Wrap up from Session #4 and a preview of the virtual session in March 2021.

A number of compelling use cases for AI have arisen in a variety of domains, including healthcare. Blockchain has seen a number of financial and supply chain use cases. Both separately and together, these technologies and their use case drivers promote both centralizing and decentralized decision-making. Both deal with and/or enable trust in different ways. In this talk, these aspects and others will be explored as we look to the future in these emerging fields and their applications.

• Dan Bowden
• Juby George
• Alex Resnik
• Peter Woodward

• Tom Anderson
• Dipto Chakravarty
• Thomas Hardjono

• Bob Celeste
• Wendy Charles
• Thomas Cox

Erika outlines the process that is now in place for submitting technical papers to this forum, vetting and selecting which papers to promote, and how to align these papers with appropriate publication and presentation. Please access here for details.

Gora Datta will close the conference session and briefly introduce the next session in April.

An informal discussion of what changes have taken place, which may persist, and what the future holds for virtual education on the topics of emerging tech in healthcare. How has the pandemic and lack of in-person meetings impacted those organizations like IEEE, ACT-IAC, and HIMSS that provide a tremendous amount of professional development? How have they adapted and what are the expectations for the future?

• Quinn DuPont, PhD (IEEE)
• Mari Greenberger (HIMSS)
• Swathi Young (ACT-IAC)

• Samantha Crowe, PhD, ACC, CDTLF
• Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, PhD
• Christiane Wirrig, PhD

An informal discussion moderated by Dave Kochalko of the Library & Systematic Review (LASYR) Infrastructure for Blockchain and Emerging Technologies project. Following a brief introduction on the project by Sean Manion that will precede the panel, this discussion will focus on the current state of the body of blockchain & healthcare literature, and what critical elements are needed to align and index such a dispersed system to better advance the field.

• Erika Beerbower, PharmD
• Anjum Khurshid, MD, PhD
• Sean Manion, PhD

Chris summarizes the two key initiative areas for IEEE and sets the context for their incorporation into the Healthcare domain, and two experts provide a summary of the respective initiatives underway within the IEEE.

• Jan Biermeyer
• Dr. Raj Nihalani
• Neil Sahota, PhD

 
European Commission | Dr. Gigler will describe the role his unit is playing in managing the Startup Europe and Innovation Radar initiatives, supporting the scaling up of deep tech startups in European ecosystems and mobilising innovators to raise the level of market ready innovation. His unit is Co-Chairing with DG FISMA the FinTech Task Force from the Digital Single Market side and driving policy action for blockchain-enabled innovation, including work on legal and regulatory aspects, managing the European Blockchain Partnership, its deployment of Digital Services Infrastructures under the Connecting Europe Facility and running the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum.

 
India | The panel consists of experts from the AI and ML disciplines from academia, industry, and representation from government funding agency in India. It will discuss how AI/ML and Blockchain is beginning to deploy as an integral part of the healthcare ecosystem in India, and its future especially with respect to Startups. The panel will also bring up some of the domain specific challenges including ethics, accountability, and the role of human ingenuity. Together as a panel, the session will bring together a composite picture of the following key aspects: 1.) Knowledge Creation from Research Institutes 2.) Knowledge Translation into products/technologies, and 3.) Funding Opportunities through the government of India.
 

Gora or Sean will close out this session with a wrap up from the financing discussions, and then give a short teaser on the upcoming June topic for Decentralized Clinical Trials.
 

Several organizations have begun to explore the challenges of decentralized clinical trials like data integrity, recruitment, regulatory issues, and sharing evidence and lessons learned across trials. This panel explores these problem areas and identify what is needed to resolve these issues.

• Dawn Brockett
• Maria Palombini
• Dr. Robert Popovian

• Dr. Wendy Charles
• Dr. Jacob Kean
• Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes

• Dr. Amin Hassanzadeh
• Dr. Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach

Gora will close out this session with a wrap up from the financing discussions, and then John will give a short teaser on the upcoming July Fireside Chat session.
 

An informative and compelling chat that will highlight the challenges in applying Blockchain to Health Care and the likely changes needed by legacy Healthcare.

Sean closes out this session with a short teaser on the upcoming August topic.

An overview of data valuation Data Integrity and Regulatory Compliance
 

(or Why Your Data Might Not Be Worth a Penny)

• Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach
• Justin D. Harris
• Wendy Charles, PhD

Sean and Gora will close out this session with a short teaser on the upcoming Fall 2021 events.
 

• 8 September 2021 | IEEE Europe & Africa Blockchain Local Groups | Archive

• 21 October 2021 | IEEE Americas Blockchain Local Groups | Archive

• 23-24 November 2021 | IEEE Asia-Pacific Blockchain Local Groups | Archive

Heather gives us an insight to an exciting new program just launched

Sean takes us on a look back through the rich content archive hosted here, recounting key aspects of the panelists and speakers on a variety of topics covered in the series.