Machine Learning for Global Health

Machine learning is increasingly being applied to problems in the healthcare domain. However, there is a risk that the development of machine learning models for improving health remain focused within areas and diseases which are more economically incentivised and resourced. This presents the risk that as research and technological entities aim to develop machine-learning-assisted consumer healthcare devices, or bespoke algorithms for their populations within a certain geographical region, that the challenges of healthcare in resource-constrained settings will be overlooked. The predominant research focus of machine learning for healthcare in the “economically advantaged” world means that there is a skew in our current knowledge of how machine learning can be used to improve health on a more global scale – for everyone. This workshop aims to draw attention to the ways that machine learning can be used for problems in global health, and to promote research on problems outside high-resource environments.