May 5, 2023 – Christopher Golden of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health is the recipient of the recent $140 million National Science Foundation (NSF) investment in artificial intelligence (AI) research, development and implementation is one of He will co-lead a project aimed at strengthening Madagascar’s public health system through AI tools. The project falls under his AI Institute for Social Decision Making (AI-SDM) led by Carnegie Mellon University. The AI Lab is one of his seven new AI Labs funded by the NSF.
AI-SDM will focus on creating tools that enable people to better anticipate and respond to uncertainties and resource constraints in disasters and poverty settings. That goal is different from “technology-oriented or capital-generating AI,” said Golden. “It is about how AI can make more efficient, fairer, and overall better decisions for the betterment of society.”
Golden is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and has been appointed to the Department of Global Health and Population and Environmental Health. He and Milind Tambe, a Gordon McKay professor of computer science and director of Harvard’s Center for Computational and Social Studies, are working together on Harvard’s project, which Golden calls “very good intercampus collaboration.” He is working together to co-lead one. AI-SDM. He also noted that Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at his school at Harvard His Chan and co-director of his initiative at Harvard Data His Science, has a “fundamental role” in the project. also mentioned.
“Our dream is to have a functioning climate-smart public health platform, a software-engineered data system where new data coming in from healthcare facilities is seamlessly overlaid with climate, environmental and social layers.” said Golden. “This will allow people to see the relationships between all these factors, so that they can best predict where, when and how much disease or disaster will tax populations, especially those who are already at their limit.” Become.”
Golden and Tambe chose Madagascar for the project because Golden has extensive experience in Madagascar. He has conducted ecological and public health research in this country over his 20 years and maintains close ties with the Ministry of Health.
“With governments ready and willing to listen, and access to high-resolution, long-term data, Madagascar serves as a very fertile ground for us to make a difference,” said Golden. “We already have Department of Health officials coming to Harvard for consultations, and we frequently discuss plans. This is truly a co-creation project.”
Such transformation will involve the use of AI technologies and techniques such as remote sensing, satellite mapping and machine learning to analyze environmental and climate-related data, such as the link between drought-induced crop failure and malnutrition or deforestation and diarrheal disease. anticipating health crises. Optimize new clinic locations based on population-level health data. It will also ensure continued availability of medicines in health centers and hospital pharmacies, especially during seasonal illness spikes.
These applications are tailored to the context of Madagascar, but they also serve as proof-of-concepts for AI’s public health potential and as replicable models for working in low-resource environments around the world. . Golden said Tambe and his team of postdocs worked with District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), an open-source health information management system used to collect, store and analyze population-level health. said to develop his AI system to Data for 75 countries, including Madagascar and his 3.2 billion people, which is his 40% of the world’s population.
“If we can develop a platform to integrate with DHIS2, it will be globally transferable. Other countries can implement it within their own contexts and for their own public health needs,” said Golden. said. “It’s really exciting.”
–Maya Braunstein
Photo: John Betts/National Geographic Society
