Bridging the Gap: The Last Mile of Healthcare with Bilal Mateen, Digital Square @ PATH

Episode 3: How do we meaningfully bridge policy and real impact at the last mile of healthcare.

Shubs Upadhyay interviews Bilal Mateen, Executive Director of Digital Square at PATH about digital health challenges and successes in underserved communities. They explore the importance of safety, regulatory considerations, and the need for inclusive data sets and data infrastructure. The discussion also covers the role of community health workers and the impact of AI and large language models in healthcare.

Addendum : [As of October 2024 Bilal is now Chief AI Officer at PATH]

Key Topics:

• Digital Public Goods: Exploring how digital solutions can be accessible public goods.
• Health Data Poverty: Discussing how this issue affects global health equity.
• The importance of strong data infrastructure
• Regulatory challenges : Bilal explores some of the work that still needs to be done
• AI in Healthcare: Insights on the use of AI and large language models to improve healthcare outcomes.

Chapters:

• 00:00 Introduction and Background
• 05:06 Digital Public Goods
• 07:04 How Health Data Poverty Plays Out
• 08:59 Reaching the Last Mile of Healthcare
• 15:47 AI and Large Language Models in Healthcare
• 29:00 Investing in Data Science Ecosystems and Regulatory Frameworks
• 32:59 More Global Representation in Regulation
• 37:03 Considering Local Nuances in AI Deployment
• 39:12 Divergent Approaches to Regulating LLMs
• 45:28 Regulation of LLMs as Medical Devices
• 48:40 Recommendations to Innovators about Healthcare Regulation

Links:

• AMIE paper by Alan Karthikesalingam et al
• Digitalsquare.org
• Audere Website
• Viamo Canada Call Centre
• Siontis et al Paper on Diagnostic test comparisons