Positive feedback on the first completed freestanding course on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

We met Helge Brandberg, a Specialist Physician in Cardiology and Internal Medicine at the Cardiovascular Department at Danderyd University Hospital and doctoral student at KI DS.

Hello Helge Brandberg, could you share a bit about your background and why you felt the need to delve into Applied Artificial Intelligence in healthcare?

– I am a cardiologist and researcher with a passion for how AI and other novel technologies can improve care for our patients. With the rapid progress of AI technology, healthcare needs to prepare for how to make the most of it and how AI can be safely and effectively implemented. The course seemed to cover this great need without diving too deep into programming.

How do you believe your understanding of AI, acquired through this course, will contribute to your current role and influence your future career path in healthcare?

– Taking the course is a conscious strategy to be able to run both clinical and research projects for AI in cardiology. Working with the implementation of AI in healthcare does not only require knowledge of medicine but also knowledge of what opportunities AI technology offers. Where healthcare can benefit from AI needs to be identified by healthcare personnel – to act for the implementation of clinical AI instead of reacting at a later stage to a need that data scientists thought existed.

After taking the Applied Artificial Intelligence course, how has your perspective on healthcare changed?

– An increased insight into the possibilities that the enormous amount of data in healthcare brings with it, but also the challenge in how data needs to be processed to be useful in AI systems. Also, healthcare contains many simple repetitive processes that are often overlooked. Often it is believed that AI is needed for the most advanced processes, but it is in these very simple processes where AI can have the greatest benefit at first.

In what way do you think the knowledge you've gained from this course will contribute to your professional development in healthcare?

– The course has given me a deepened and broadened understanding of how different AI systems are structured, in which situations they are best used and their strengths and weaknesses. With this knowledge, I will be able to conduct broadened and more exciting clinical AI research and now have the tools to take a role in being able to implement AI in our clinical everyday life.

Considering that AI in healthcare is a swiftly advancing field, how has this course equipped you with the fundamental knowledge and critical thinking skills to analyze and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of emerging AI applications?

– Understanding how an AI system is structured also provides insight into where things can go wrong, and which ethical aspects should be considered. Through the course, I have been given tools to assess what constitutes a "trustworthy AI" and which critical aspects should be taken into account during clinical implementation. It has also highlighted the lack of current regulations but given insight into international ongoing regulatory projects such as the “AI act,” which is expected to come into force in the next few years.

Would you recommend this course to other students interested in AI and healthcare? Why or why not?

– Yes, the course is very suitable for those who are interested in how AI can be used in healthcare. There is a great need for the knowledge that the course addresses. The theoretical part has a greater weight on image recognition than other types of AI systems. If you have an ongoing AI project or are in the planning stage, you will benefit from applying the theories directly. I highly recommend the course as I believe this particular knowledge can contribute greatly to improved patient care.