Innovating for equity: reducing gender bias and making healthcare data more accessible
challenge hosted by imec and VITO
imec, world-leading R&D and innovation hub, and VITO, the Flemish sustainability research institute, have partnered with Hack Belgium Labs for the upcoming Hack Healthcare Hackathon 2024 (October 23-24, Brussels).
This collaboration brings together cutting-edge expertise in the “Real-world evidence and secondary use of healthcare data” theme, focusing on how these can be leveraged to improve healthcare outcomes.
Imec and VITO are committed to exploring how data collection and analysis processes can be refined to generate more relevant and equitable information for patients, practitioners, and researchers. In this context, a key focus is on how all healthcare stakeholders can contribute to reducing gender bias through the use of specific data points.
The challenge: Ensuring accessible and equitable healthcare data
The challenge hosted by imec and VITO addresses the difficulty of presenting complex medical data to healthcare professionals in a clear and insightful manner. While there is an increasing amount of data available, its quality and interoperability are not always guaranteed. Even with high-quality data, the challenge lies in avoiding information overload and finding more effective ways to visualize this data, enabling healthcare professionals to establish clear patient care pathways.
The goal is to reimagine the user experience for health decision support tools, focusing on creating a user-centered experience that truly assists healthcare professionals and patients in making informed medical decisions. A significant part of this effort is reducing bias in these tools, ensuring that complex medical data is presented in an effective way to support shared decision-making.
In the shift toward personalized medicine, the importance of tailored advice and healthcare solutions is critical. By focusing on individualized health challenges and specific risks, we can create more effective treatments and outcomes. Decision support tools, powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence), play a crucial role in this transformation. As these tools become increasingly accessible, it’s essential that they are built on accurate data and effective visualization methods. Whether for healthcare professionals or patients, the usability of these tools hinges on how well they can present complex information in a clear and actionable way.
We have already considered various aspects, but one particularly interesting finding was the issue of bias. Bias can emerge at multiple levels, from data collection to data visualization and interpretation. One recommendation from participants of the Ecosystem Workshop was to start with a specific use case and focus on precise, concrete details. For example, using a case like detection of Atrial Fibrillation in women could provide valuable and diverse insights. It is recommended to involve a broad and diverse group of participants to achieve this.
What to expect from Hack Healthcare?
- Enhancing usability: The challenge is to present complex medical data, such as risk factors and treatment options, in an easy-to-understand manner for both patients and healthcare providers. This helps reduce errors and biases in data interpretation.
- Improving accessibility: The design of healthcare tools must be accessible to a wide range of users, including those with disabilities or those less familiar with digital technologies. This includes considerations such as color blindness and digital literacy.
- Facilitating shared decision-making: It’s not just about presenting data, but also about providing ways to visualize it that make comparisons and decisions easier. Tools like comparison charts and decision trees can simplify complex information for users.
- Ensuring data privacy and security: Health data must be kept private and secure without complicating the user experience. The challenge is to provide a seamless user experience while maintaining robust security measures.
- User-centric customization: Personalization is key. Users should be able to customize their experience based on their preferences and needs, whether they are laypersons wanting a simple interface or specialists requiring detailed analytics.
At the end of the hackathon, the hope is to produce a prototype or mock-up of an innovative interface, along with a plan to address accessibility standards in the design. These concrete outcomes will demonstrate the potential for real-world application and improvements in decision-support tools like PTRA.
From our previous experiences with Hack Belgium, we’ve been able to establish approaches that drive real change. That’s the beauty of Hack Healthcare.
Don’t miss out: Who should attend Hack Healthcare 2024
The event is open to anyone who believes they can contribute to the challenge. This includes patients and healthcare professionals, whose insights have been shown to add significant value, as well as hospital staff, UX/UI experts, and anyone with innovative ideas on integrating and visualizing diverse health data in a user-friendly manner.
Those interested in improving decision support tools and advancing personalized medicine are encouraged to attend and contribute to this exciting challenge.
Hack Healthcare 2024 promises to be a collaborative and transformative event, driving forward the use of data in healthcare in ways that are both innovative and equitable.
Save Data project: from collected health data to insights and innovation
VITO and imec not only bring the challenge to the table, but also offer meaningful resources -from strong technical expertise and an extensive network of contacts- to help transform innovative ideas into real projects. By leveraging their assets, they aim to foster collaboration and turn promising concepts into practical solutions for improving healthcare.
Save Data Coock is a project of VITO, imec, and Medvia. The goal of the project is to make data, technical building blocks and knowledge available for all the players in the quadruple helix (industry, research, citizens, government) in an ethical, safe and transparent way. Data and applications are separated, and personal health data are placed with the individual to create an open and trustworthy eco-system. Within this system, context data and complex data analysis is made possible, to allow for innovation, data-driven R&D, and more personalised medicine/applications within a level playing field.
VITO is an independent Flemish research organisation in the area of cleantech and sustainable development. Their goal is to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world, with a focus on research in sustainable health, chemistry, energy, materials and land use.
About imec
Imec is the world’s leading independent nanoelectronics R&D hub. The combination of our talent, infrastructure, and partner network enables breakthroughs towards microchips that are smaller, faster, more affordable, and more sustainable. We combine that nanotech expertise with data and AI to create and support applications for a smarter, better future.
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