Science Summit at United Nations General Assembly 77 (UNGA77)

[ONLINE] Artificial Intelligence Research in Health: Tackling Global Challenges as One - Convened by The International Digital Health & AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR), Switzerland

N.B. This session is for online attendance only. Should you wish to register for the in-person session please register here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help unlock new preventive treatments, advance personalized medicine, and implement precise public health interventions. However, there is a growing knowledge power imbalance between a few countries leading in AI and the rest of the world. In particular, researchers and innovators in low-middle income countries (LMICs) lack the required training, high-quality datasets, and infrastructure to develop and apply algorithms based on their own contexts. Furthermore, initiatives to build health datasets are often siloed, thereby limiting their value for the AI research and development (R&D) landscape due to a lack of scale and diversity. These challenges make it difficult to conduct inclusive and impactful AI research in health that provides global benefits.

In order to harness the power of AI in health, I-DAIR and its partners believe in a transdisciplinary, collaborative approach to AI research in health, with a focus on bringing together the voices of different LMICs stakeholders from the outset. Having a neutral, trusted space for knowledge exchange and where existing technologies are available as digital public goods can enable the global R&D agenda to manifest sustainably and bring us closer to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.

The International Digital Health & AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) and its global partners from the United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau), Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), the Africa-Canada AI and & Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) led by York University and the University of the Witwatersrand, and the City University of New York (CUNY) are thus conducting a session to explore how collaborative research in AI for health can be established and sustained, as well as how technology can help to overcome pressing global health challenges advancing healthy lives and well-being for all.

Divided into two discussions, this session will introduce practical and applicable solutions in response to the recommendations made by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, focusing on health challenges as a use case to help identify potential action points and catalyze international collaboration to address them.

The first panel “Promoting collaborative research in AI for health” will look at promoting collaborative research for responsible AI for health by means of levelling the playing field and promoting inclusivity and transdisciplinarity in research to foster responsible development and deployment of AI in health with contextualized and unbiased technology that can ensure human agency over AI in the long run.
The second panel “State of the art in AI for health” will explore how to leverage technology to overcome pressing global health challenges (namely anti-microbial resistance, outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and environmental changes) and provide effective methods of early detection. Going beyond the traditional vertical approach, we will explore how AI can help cut across scientific silos to promote a holistic approach to solving these challenges.

This event will contribute to advancing national and international R&D agendas and digital health strategies by bringing examples and evidence from different contexts on the use of technology for achieving SDG 3. It will enrich and deepen the dialogue between government representatives, scientists and civil society on some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities in using AI to improve the future of healthcare and drive universal health coverage.

The draft program of this virtual event is as follows: 

12:30pm (EDT)
Opening Remarks 

• Dr. Christoph Benn – Chair, I-DAIR Board (Switzerland)
  
  

12:40pm
Keynote Speech

• USG Amandeep Singh Gill – Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology (United Nations)
  
  

12:55pm
Panel 1 - Promoting collaborative research in AI for health

• Prof. Anurag Agrawal – Dean, Biosciences and Health Research, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University (India)
• Dr. Dominique Charron – Vice-President, Programs and Partnerships, IDRC (Canada)
• Dr. Sathy Rajasekharan – Co-Executive Director, Jacaranda Health (Kenya)
• Dr. Soumya Swaminathan – Chief Scientist, WHO (Switzerland)
• [moderator] Dr. Christoph Benn – Chair, I-DAIR Board (Switzerland)

1:35pm
Panel 2 - State of the art in AI for health

• Mr. Jake Okechukwu Effoduh – Chief Counsel, ACADIC (Canada/Nigeria)
• Prof. Bruce Y. Lee – Executive Director, Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH), CUNY School of Public Health representative (USA)
• Prof. Bruce Mellado – University of the Witwatersrand/iThemba LABS (South Africa)
• Prof. Carisi Polanczyk – Professor of Medicine, UFRGS (Brazil)
• Dr. Serge Stinckwich – Head of Research, UNU-Macau (United Nations)
• [moderator] Dr. Peiling Yap – Chief Scientist, I-DAIR (Switzerland/Malaysia)
  
  

2:15pm
Closing remarks

• Dr. Stefan Germann – CEO, Fondation Botnar (Switzerland)
  
  

To register, kindly use this link and feel free to email I-DAIR’s Scientific Community Manager, Brian Li Han Wong at brian.wong@graduateinstitute.ch should you have any questions.

[IN-PERSON] Artificial Intelligence Research in Health: Tackling Global Challenges as One - Convened by The International Digital Health & AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR), Switzerland

N.B. This session is for in-person, physical attendance only. Should you wish to register for the online, please register here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help unlock new preventive treatments, advance personalized medicine, and implement precise public health interventions. However, there is a growing knowledge power imbalance between a few countries leading in AI and the rest of the world. In particular, researchers and innovators in low-middle income countries (LMICs) lack the required training, high-quality datasets, and infrastructure to develop and apply algorithms based on their own contexts. Furthermore, initiatives to build health datasets are often siloed, thereby limiting their value for the AI research and development (R&D) landscape due to a lack of scale and diversity. These challenges make it difficult to conduct inclusive and impactful AI research in health that provides global benefits.

In order to harness the power of AI in health, I-DAIR and its partners believe in a transdisciplinary, collaborative approach to AI research in health, with a focus on bringing together the voices of different LMICs stakeholders from the outset. Having a neutral, trusted space for knowledge exchange and where existing technologies are available as digital public goods can enable the global R&D agenda to manifest sustainably and bring us closer to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.

The International Digital Health & AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) and its global partners from the United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau), Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), the Africa-Canada AI and & Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) led by York University and the University of the Witwatersrand, and the City University of New York (CUNY) are thus conducting a session to explore how collaborative research in AI for health can be established and sustained, as well as how technology can help to overcome pressing global health challenges advancing healthy lives and well-being for all.

Divided into two discussions, this session will introduce practical and applicable solutions in response to the recommendations made by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, focusing on health challenges as a use case to help identify potential action points and catalyze international collaboration to address them.

The first panel “Promoting collaborative research in AI for health” will look at promoting collaborative research for responsible AI for health by means of levelling the playing field and promoting inclusivity and transdisciplinarity in research to foster responsible development and deployment of AI in health with contextualized and unbiased technology that can ensure human agency over AI in the long run.
The second panel “State of the art in AI for health” will explore how to leverage technology to overcome pressing global health challenges (namely anti-microbial resistance, outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and environmental changes) and provide effective methods of early detection. Going beyond the traditional vertical approach, we will explore how AI can help cut across scientific silos to promote a holistic approach to solving these challenges.

This event will contribute to advancing national and international R&D agendas and digital health strategies by bringing examples and evidence from different contexts on the use of technology for achieving SDG 3. It will enrich and deepen the dialogue between government representatives, scientists and civil society on some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities in using AI to improve the future of healthcare and drive universal health coverage.

The draft program of the event is as follows: 
A light lunch will be offered to in-person participants inside the conference rooms.

12:30pm (EDT)
Opening Remarks 

• Dr. Christoph Benn – Chair, I-DAIR Board (Switzerland)
  
  

12:40pm
Keynote Speech

• USG Amandeep Singh Gill – Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology (United Nations)
  
  

12:55pm
Panel 1 - Promoting collaborative research in AI for health

• Prof. Anurag Agrawal – Dean, Biosciences and Health Research, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University (India)
• Dr. Dominique Charron – Vice-President, Programs and Partnerships, IDRC (Canada)
• Dr. Sathy Rajasekharan – Co-Executive Director, Jacaranda Health (Kenya)
  
• Dr. Soumya Swaminathan – Chief Scientist, WHO (Switzerland)
• [moderator] Dr. Christoph Benn – Chair, I-DAIR Board (Switzerland)

1:35pm
Panel 2 - State of the art in AI for health

• Mr. Jake Okechukwu Effoduh – Chief Counsel, ACADIC (Canada/Nigeria)
• Prof. Bruce Y. Lee – Executive Director, Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH), CUNY School of Public Health representative (USA)
• Prof. Bruce Mellado – University of the Witwatersrand/iThemba LABS (South Africa)
• Prof. Carisi Polanczyk – Professor of Medicine, UFRGS (Brazil)
• Dr. Serge Stinckwich – Head of Research, UNU-Macau (United Nations)
• [moderator] Dr. Peiling Yap – Chief Scientist, I-DAIR (Switzerland/Malaysia)
  
  

2:15pm
Closing remarks

• Dr. Stefan Germann – CEO, Fondation Botnar (Switzerland)

2:30-3:30pm
Networking reception​​​​

To register, kindly use this link and feel free to email I-DAIR’s Scientific Community Manager, Brian Li Han Wong at brian.wong@graduateinstitute.ch should you have any questions.

PLEASE JOIN ONLINE SESSION
 https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89905353551?pwd=S0pyZ3hBWjV2WjYzcmMvRGg2Tm1IUT09

Health care represents a significant financial burden for any society and the most critical aspect personally especially for an aging population. These principles are at the center of the UN SDG-3 ‘Good Health and Well Being’. The future of medicine relies on personalized individualized approaches to health care. Each one of us has a different genetic makeup, lifestyle, diet, microbiome, etc. All these factors greatly impact our health and disease susceptibility and progression. It is therefore only natural that our health care, both preventive and acute, be based on these factors. This will in no doubt improve health care effectiveness and decrease disease burden. However, personalized medicine (PM) relies on deep phenotyping of individuals using muti-omics approaches to define the different features that affect ones health. These includes genomics through sequencing of the genome, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, microbiome sequencing, etc. Such approach tend to be costly thus decreasing accessibility globally. As the technologies mature this will bring costs down thus increasing access globally. Another major challenge to applying PM widely is the adoption by practicing clinician given the novelty of the technologies. Our goal in this panel is to discuss these aspects of PM and begin to forge a path to apply PM globally in the context of SDG-3.  

JOIN ONLINE SESSION
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84618851717?pwd=MTNHQ2llUWFMbi8yaUYzWXM3SUVkUT09

"Development and regulation for innovative health products in Latin America"
 
Monday September 26th, 2022
12 noon EDT (1 PM Argentina and Brazil)
Convener : Waldo H. Belloso, Director, Innovation Unit, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina

This session will focus on the challenges and opportunities that exist in Latin America for the planification, development, scaling-up and insertion in regional and global markets of innovative health technologies. Latin America is progressively looking towards local creativity in order to strengthen its role as a player in the broad scenario of healthcare technology.
This session will be based upon the experience of actual developments and project leaders that will share with the audience their view of the regional potential for entrepreneurship and investment, and how they overcame the hurdles of a growing market. In addition, the session will provide an update of the regulatory status for innovative products.

Participants

Marcela Rizzo, National Director of the Medical Technology Institute of the National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology of Argentina (ANMAT)
“Challenges in regulation of healthcare innovations in Latin America” (TBD)

Esteban Corley, Director of MAbxience Argentina, productor of biosimilar monoclonal antibodies
“Manufacturing and scaling-up of the production of quality biosimilars in Argentina”

Fernando Goldbaum, PhD, Co-Founder and Scientific Director of the biotech company Inmunova
“Development of new polyclonal immunotherapies for SARS-CoV-2 and hemolytic uremic syndrome”

Osvaldo Podhajcer, PhD, Head of the Molecular and Cellular Therapy Laboratory at Fundación Instituto Leloir, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Planification and development of an innovative vaccine for COVID-19 in Argentina”

Rodrigo Bornhausen Demarch (TBC), Chief Innovation Officer, Hospital Albert Einstein, Sao Paulo, Brazil
“Management of healthcare innovation in Latin America”

Biobanking for Bangladesh - Convened by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU)

In person event at The Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations, 820 2nd Ave 4th floor, New York, NY 10017

Abstract
The importance of an international standard biobank in Bangladesh has enormous potential for future research. Since the clinical consequences of genetic and molecular alterations differ with patient race and ethnicity, the usefulness of these molecular alterations as biomarkers/drug development needs to be evaluated in different racial/ ethnic groups. Various factors, including cellular and molecular heterogeneity within tumors, varying host immune responses, diet, environmental exposure, lifestyle, and patient demographics, influence the effectiveness of cancer drugs/biomarkers.

Thus, the one-size-fits-all approach is obsolete, and there is a need to design strategies to develop effective drugs/biomarkers by applying principles of individualised cancer care. It is well known that racial disparities exist in drug/biomarker testing and clinical trial enrolment, as most of the approved cancer drugs/biomarkers have been tested on Caucasian populations. The lack of reliable/trustworthy biomaterial with clinical data is one of the primary reasons why many Asian countries are underrepresented in biomarker studies.

Our proposal aims to address this grand challenge by establishing a biobank and research facility at BSSMU/Bangladesh that will ensure long-term clinical research collaboration with top universities worldwide. This initiative could set up an example of how to strengthen academic scientific research in developing countries in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure inclusiveness in science at the global level.
2.00 pm - 2.10 pmWelcome and introduction
Declan Kirrane, Chairman, Science Summit at United Nations General Assembly (SSUNGA77), Managing Director, Africa-Europe Science Collaboration and Innovation Platform.2.10 pm - 2.35pmBiobanking and global health challenges
Prof. Kurt Zatloukal, Director of BBMRI.at, Head of the Diagnostic and Research
Center for Molecular Biomedicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.2.35 pm - 3.00 pmBiobanking international networks, collaborative projects, and prospects
Dr. Zisis Kozlakidis, Head, Laboratory Services and Biobank Group, World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France3.00 pm - 3.20 pmHealth infrastructure of Bangladesh: opportunities for BSSMU to lead translational research in the region
Prof. Md. Sharfuddin Ahmed, Vice-Chancellor, BSMMU*3.20 pm - 3.45 pmBiobanks: A pillar in precision medicine; Qatar Biobank experience
Professor Asmaa Al Thani, Vice President for Health and Medical Sciences and Director of Biomedical Research Center
Dr. Nahla Afifi, Director of Qatar Biobank3.45 pm - 4.05 pmThe Role of Biobank in the development of translational research
Dr. Arman Rahman, Assistant Professor, School of Medicine, UCD, Ireland4.05 pm - 4.25 pmCurrent research infrastructure at BSSMU, how a biobank can improve current research practice
Prof. Laila Anjuman Banu, Professor of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Chairman, Department of Anatomy, BSMMU4.25 pm - 4.50 pmBiobanking and international sharing for research, ethical and legal implications
Dr. Rita Lawlor, Biobank and Model Bank Director, Research Centre Coordinator, Centre for Applied Research on Cancer, University of Verona.4.50 pm – 5.10 pmEthics and legal framework of Bangladeshi/south Asian law for biobanking
Prof. Md. Sayedur Rahman, Professor, and Chairman, Department of Pharmacology, BSMMU