Healthcare Innovation Challenge Reimagines Human Connection through AI and Refugee Health

Kayvan Aflaki and Serena Peck, MSc students at the IMS, wanted to create an enriching, hands-on competitive learning experience to challenge graduate students to solve real-world healthcare problems. So, with seed funding from the IMS Jay Keystone Award for Innovation in Scientific Communication and with the support of faculty advisor Dr. Pascal Tyrrell, they developed The Healthcare Innovation Challenge . The inaugural theme, Artificial Intelligence & Refugee Health: Reimagine Human Connection, brings together two emergent and seemingly unrelated topics in healthcare discourse. The need for innovative and timely solutions to the health challenges faced by this unique patient population is a pressing concern in Canada and worldwide.

The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health of Canada, in his Ministerial Message on The Healthcare Innovation Challenge, writes that "This year's theme - Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Refugee Health - reflects the fact that AI systems can play an important role in the delivery of quality healthcare, respecting human right principles - no matter where you were born."

On June 24, 2022 the top five teams were invited to give a 5-minute pitch of their idea to an esteemed panel of expert judges and a live audience. The finalists' proposals included an AI algorithm based app to assist health care practitioners with the collection of refugee health information, a tool to predict and treat post-traumatic stress disorder in children using a psychological chatbot, and software that uses auditory data and self-assessments to predict the development of post-partum depression in refugee women.

The People's Choice Award, determined by audience vote, went to Team 9 (Alex Boshart, Adriano Nella, Nairy Khodabakhshian & Marlene Rong) for RefugeeART - an app that utilizes a Convolutional Neural Network platform to screen for mental health concerns by analyzing artwork made by refugee children.