First New Zealand AI healthcare conference Hack Aotearoa attracts world-renowned experts

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The first New Zealand artificial intelligence in healthcare conference will see data scientists, academics and healthcare professionals come together to use their expertise to solve global healthcare problems.

The two-day Hack Aotearoa event is hosted by The University of Auckland School of Medical and Health Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Critical Data.

The globally recognised MIT Critical Data events aim to drive cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning using big data analytics to push the boundaries to discover what is possible.

The Auckland-based workshops will be led by highly successful academics from MIT, Harvard, the University of Michigan, the National University of Singapore and Monash University in partnership with local experts.

The conference will see world-renowned technology leaders such as founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine and executive vice-president of Scripps Research Eric Topol and MIT Technology Laboratory for Computational Physiology clinical research director and principal research scientist Leo Anthony Celi present about the latest innovations and insights in health data science, as well as bring a key focus on how personalised medicine will be achieved, especially through the development of advanced digital tools.

Partnering to bring Hack Aotearoa to New Zealand, Precision Driven Health general manager Kevin Ross is proud to support the initiative.

“As a public-private partnership, we are looking forward to fostering the innovation of technology and tools which address issues across the healthcare sector,” says Ross.

“New Zealand boasts a strong community of talented developers and academics and, together with our world-class research capability, I believe we have the potential to lead the world in health IT.

The Accident Compensation Corporation is the major sponsor of Hack Aotearoa, and chief executive Scott Pickering says the opportunity to collaborate with AI and healthcare experts to identify how data could be harnessed to improve the delivery of health services was too good to pass up.

“ACC wants to achieve the best rehabilitation outcomes for injured New Zealanders, and we believe there is a lot to be gained from utilising data we have available. Being able to get experts of this level together to start exploring how we use data to ultimately better the lives of New Zealanders is one that we were determined to be involved with.”

Hack Aotearoa will take place from 18–19 January 2019 at the Owen G Glenn Business School, The University of Auckland.

Source: Hack Aotearoa media release, 18 December 2018

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