Grant: Canada Research Chairs

This research program addresses a global challenge. With the swaying progress in novel digital technologies, particularly in artificial intelligence, data analytics and cloud connectivity, “digital health” is on the cusp of transforming access to healthcare. The G7 governments in 2023 declared digital technologies essential to “support achieving and promoting more efficient, inclusive, resilient, equitable, and sustainable universal health coverage, through global cooperation and through equitable and inclusive partnerships”. Medical imaging, a fundamental tool in digital medicine, has been largely unavailable in low-income countries. Emerging low-cost point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) imaging now stands to change this status quo, by enabling physicians to perform diagnostic and therapeutic interventions at the bedside, whether in an urban hospital, rural clinic, or mobile care unit. POCUS has the potential to transcend geographic and socioeconomic barriers and limitations and bring closer the ideal of equitable access to healthcare. There are a multitude of applications for POCUS in diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Hence this research program concentrates on developing novel computing and engineering technologies to transcend the state of art in POCUS image guided medical interventions. The program will harness novel artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to create practical solutions for precise, accurate and effective delivery and training of POCUS interventions. The work will be informed and driven by two specific global healthcare challenges, obstructive kidney diseases and prostate cancer. The program has a strong emphasis on the Global Health context, through cocreation with research partners in sub-Saharan West Africa and Canada and through dissemination of research outcomes as free open-source software resources.