How Synthetic Data Can Improve AI in Medicine with Dr. Amanda Purnell

The Buzz with ACT-IAC

Artificial Intelligence technologies continue to develop in leaps and bounds with each passing year, and their impact on our lives will only become more salient as these tools increase in complexity and variety.
Though AI applications have the potential to revolutionize nearly every sector of the economy, they also carry significant risks that will require careful thought and intentional design to mitigate harm. AI systems - defined their ability to learn iteratively and improve their decision-making capabilities - require massive amounts of data with which to train them. Though we may call them "intelligent", these machines are merely reflections of the inputs we give them, and incomplete or non-representative data sets lead to biased systems.
In the medical field, this issue is particularly salient, as the very health and well-being of humans is at stake. In addition, using patient data to train AI tools raises significant privacy concerns.
Enter synthetic data. As the name implies, synthetic data is entirely computer-generated, so no personal information of actual patients is at stake. Synthetic data can also be designed to fill in the gaps of real-world data sets, thereby reducing bias.
To learn more about how synthetic data is being used in Federal healthcare, The Buzz is joined by Dr. Amanda Purnell, Director of Data and Analytics Innovation at the Department of Veteran's Affairs.
Learn more about the VA's Arches Platform: https://marketplace.va.gov/innovations/arches

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Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound