In November 2018 we shared the news of HSRU’s Magdalena Rzewuska's (@RzewuskaM) visit to the University of São Paulo’s campus in Ribeirão Preto. On a related note, at the end of July 2019, the HSRU & Aberdeen Centre for Health Data Science (ACHDS) jointly hosted a four-day visit of four researchers from Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo. Academic-clinicians (Drs João Mazzoncini and Leonardo Moscovici) and data scientists (Drs Paulo Mazzoncini and Lariza de Oliveira) visited us with the view to establish an AI research partnership.
Our Magdalena Rzewuska brought together experts and enthusiasts in data science and healthcare improvement from across the University of Aberdeen (UoA), University of St Andrews, University of São Paulo, NHS Grampian and the pioneering consortium ICAIRD. In a friendly atmosphere, we exchanged visions, identified opportunities, brainstormed ideas and found a ‘common language’. Topics covered by the meetings included AI’s roles in improving healthcare for vulnerable primary care patients and Electronic Medical Record systems; building an international platform to discuss data-driven clinical pathway; the UoA’s Fast Field-Cycling MRI advancing neuroimaging and sharing health data like computational neuroimages. An inter-institutional agreement and funding opportunities were also discussed with the Institute of Applied Health Science’s directorate and a business development officer.
It felt like a step towards a Blue Ocean Shift in AI research for healthcare. We look forward to sharing more updates about the future progress.
The visit was funded by the Global Challenge Research Fund - Internal Pump Priming Fund. We are utterly grateful to all our colleagues for their invaluable contributions.