The AI Hub @SMHS
The SMHS has long-term plans for an AI Hub. Below is a conceptual overview of this future idea.
We propose to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) Hub at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) that will become the Midwest region’s premiere research and development center for transforming healthcare delivery (especially in rural areas) and healthcare education through the integration and application of AI. The AI Hub will partner with rural and urban regional healthcare organizations to design, develop, implement, and evaluate machine learning to:
- Transform rural healthcare delivery and improve outcomes.
- Integrate AI into the fabric of healthcare education to promote competency-based education via continuous and personalized cycles of teaching, learning, and assessment.
- Promote personal and professional AI literacy for healthcare students, educators, and clinicians, all with a primary (but not exclusive) emphasis on rural healthcare.
The AI Hub will achieve its vision through three Cores, each of which work synergistically with each other:
- Healthcare Delivery Core will design AI solutions to challenges in health care delivery outcomes, processes, and efficiencies.
- Research and Development Core will conduct the research needed to develop AI healthcare solutions and to promote AI healthcare research literacy for students.
- Healthcare Training Core will ensure that graduates have basic AI literacy and experience with designing AI solutions to healthcare delivery challenges.
These Cores will be guided by the AI Hub Director (new position) who will be supported by multiple offices, committees, and personnel within the UND SMHS (see Figure 1, page 2) and UND campus as well as entities within the AI Hub such as:
- Healthcare Advisory Board (external group representing healthcare organizations in the region).
- Healthcare Governance Committees (comprising faculty, staff, and students to advise on priorities and provide feedback on proposed projects and initiatives of the AI Hub).
- Research, Healthcare Delivery, and Healthcare Training Core Leads (faculty with percent efforts of 20% in Phase 1, 50% in Phase 2, and 100% in Phase 3).
- Faculty from UND’s Engineering and Computer Science (two faculty with 20% effort and one graduate research assistant).
