“Covering 5 years, the Medical Data + Pizza event series has followed a compelling timeline, encompassing the period when AI came of age, and became sexy. We spoke with AI professor and co-founder Mark Hoogendoorn about the challenging task of bringing AI to the bedside – in Amsterdam and across Europe – and about the power of pizza to get things moving.”
Thanks to EdenFrost and the Amsterdam Economic Board, I received a free education in AI by reporting on nearly every edition of the Medical Data + Pizza event. After 25 editions, it was a good time to chat and reflect with cofounder Mark Hoogendoorn, a professor of artificial intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Department of Computer Science.
Read the full report: ‘What’s in a number? 25 times Medical Data & Pizza’.
Read my reports from previous Medical Data + Pizza Meet-ups
Building an AI ecosystem one slice at a time
“It began as a simple concept: to play cupid between two very different beasts. On one side you have the data scientists – always hungry for pizza, but also for real-world problems to solve. And on the other, the medical professionals – who share the pizza hunger, but already have plenty of very real-world problems on offer.”
“Together with medical counterpart Paul Elbers, intensivist and associate professor of intensive care medicine at Amsterdam UMC, Mark formed the Amsterdam Medical Data Science (AMDS) network. Supported by Amsterdam UMC, OLVG, Vrije Universiteit, PacMed, and Amsterdam Economic Board the network grew rapidly to 2,154 members and counting.“
“The event has seemingly covered it all – from modelling hospital admissions during COVID to racist algorithms and from making humans and machines get along to predicting the best drug combinations to target an individual’s brain cancer.”
“…What shines through at each Data + Pizza event is this: people want to make a positive impact on the world, even though they are aware of the monumental task at hand – technically, ethically, regulatorily. There’s a certain shared belief in a happy ending if we all just get to work.”
“It’s true, I’m a fairly optimistic person by nature,” Mark smiles.
Onward and upward
The event snowballed from data scientists and doctors to attract a remarkably diverse crowd in terms of age, gender, nationality, and profession. And of course, as AI became an increasingly hot topic, it only snowballed further.
“Meanwhile, Mark is looking forward to seeing how Europe forges ahead with a more people-centred approach to AI – in contrast to the US, where corporations tend to control patient data, or China, where the government calls the shots. Hoogendoorn believes the EU approach is the way forward, even as critics say the required infrastructure will work to slow innovation in the region.”
“We need these safeguards in place. We have to be careful with potential downsides,” says Mark. “In the long run, I think it will prove beneficial, because you’ll have more support from the public. I don’t think patients are against sharing their data if it helps the next patient. People’s distrust is more directed at the government and policymakers.”
Read the full report: ‘What’s in a number? 25 times Medical Data & Pizza’.
Read my reports from previous Medical Data + Pizza Meet-ups.
