Dramatic changes in the capacity, size and distribution of technology has meant an unprecedented acceleration in the generation of electronic data in recent years. This includes traditional health data, but also nontraditional sources like smartphones, shopping data and more. More recently, machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems have been developed which can utilize these enormous amounts of data, seeking useful patterns.  While the commercial sector has taken the lead in applying AI to big data, it’s clear that it will also be applied to both the traditional healthcare system as well as to health promotion outside that system. Dr. Joel Selanikio, a technologist and practicing physician, leads the audience from the definitions and origins of big data through examples of the first steps—and the larger promise—of applying AI in healthcare.

A veteran of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and an experienced emergency responder, Dr. Joel Selanikio took six weeks in the winter of 2014–2015 to run an Ebola Treatment Center in the heart of the epidemic in Sierra Leone, an experience shared with NPR listeners in the form of an audio diary. Unprepared for a “treatment center” largely without effective treatments, or for a patient death rate of more than 60%, Dr. Selanikio speaks of the daily and intimate patient contact, the personal fear and exhaustion, the co-workers risking their lives, and the dignity of patients facing near-certain death in this moving, up-close discussion of one of the deadliest infectious disease outbreaks in modern history.

Collaboration has been the key to the acceleration of progress in medicine as well as other branches of science. In this talk, Dr. Joel Selanikio discusses how a lack of collaborative capacity in years past set back scientific progress by decades. He discusses the requirements for increased collaboration — communication and prosperity — and shows how the steady advance of both these phenomena has led to increased collaboration first in the West, and now increasingly in other newly-prosperous and connected areas of the world — notably China. Finally, he points out the prospects for further advancements and further collaboration as the centuries-long rise in living standards, education, and more recently connectivity bring for the first time the possibility of truly worldwide collaboration.

We are almost fifty years into a titanic shift in technology, from institution-centric to consumer-first.  The effects of this change are now being felt in the healthcare IT space, as medical staff accustomed to Uber and iPhones push back against antiquated, unconnected EHR (electronic health record) systems. What’s the nature of this secular shift, how did it happen, and what does it mean for the future of health, and of healthcare IT. Dr. Selanikio will take the audience through more than fifty years of accelerating change, and explain why the biggest changes in health tech are yet to come.

For nearly 15 years, Dr. Joel Selanikio has headed Magpi, a technology company creating affordable tools widely used within global health, the non-profit sector and international development. Often described as “like Gmail but for data collection,” Magpi was the first to apply the self-service principles of Gmail and Facebook, the “software-as-a-service” technology approach of Salesforce, the “freemium” pricing model of Skype, and other Silicon Valley technology and business models to the very different world of global health and international development. For anyone interested in social enterprise, or how technological innovation can be applied to solve social problems, Dr. Selanikio will guide you through a frank discussion of the challenges and pitfalls that can divert or derail, the technology approaches that let you “punch above your weight” and the achievements that result.