The "AI in Public Health" workshop was an intensive 4-day program designed to provide participants with a practical understanding of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be applied to enhance public health activities. Through hands-on activities, case studies, and discussions, participants learned about AI tools, techniques, and applications that can improve disease surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, and overall healthcare delivery.
This workshop took place across two weekends (September 22-23, 2023 and September 29-30, 2023) at the Child Health Research Foundation (Head Quarters). The workshop's instructors were Yogesh Hooda, PhD (Scientist & Lead of Biochemistry, CHRF) and Senjuti Saha, PhD (Director & Senior Scientist, CHRF). The workshop's guest speakers included Sudipta Saha (PhD Candidate, Harvard University, USA) and Mark Sun, PhD (Principal Research Scientist, Versant Stealth Startup, Canada.
The learning objectives of the workshop were the following:
- Understand the basic terminology and concepts of AI
- Evaluate the potential benefits and challenges of implementing AI in public health
- Analyze real-world case studies of AI applications in disease surveillance
- Use established AI tools (ChatGPT, BARD) to speed up public health data analysis
- Critically assess ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI integration in public health.
The workshop's format and activities were:
- Interactive lectures and presentations
- Hands-on exercises and practical demonstrations
- Group discussions and case studies
- Guest speakers from the field of AI and public health
- Take-home assignments
The workshop's target audience were:
- Public health professionals
- Researchers and academics in public health and AI
- Students interested in the intersection of AI and public health
We thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for making this course possible, as part of the “Democratizing Public Health Modeling Using AI-based Tools” grant made to CHRF.
Anyone interested in this workshop can find all relevant materials here:
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Course Timeline |
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Course Materials |
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Day |
Lectures & Exercises |
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Day 1: Introduction to AI |
Introduction to AI concepts and terminology |
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Key applications of AI in public health |
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ChatGPT and other large pre-trained AI models |
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Introduction to Prompting |
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Hands-on: Generating codes through AI |
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Day 2: AI Applications in Public Health Modeling |
Introduction to public health modeling |
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Incidence of typhoid fever in Bangladesh |
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Hands-on: Typhoid incidence calculation in Bangladesh |
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Take-home assignment: Modeling direct and indirect impact of typhoid-conjugate vaccines in Bangladesh |
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Day 3: AI Applications in Disease Surveillance |
Time series forecasting and application to Dengue fever prediction |
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Hands-on: Data cleaning and preparation |
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Hands-on: ARIMA |
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Hands-on: LSTM network |
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Day 4: Implementing AI in public health and future trends |
Medical image analysis using AI algorithms |
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Hands-on: Detecting pneumonia through chest X-rays |
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