As a researcher in artificial intelligence for medical imaging in the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Ali Bashashati is working to improve how cancer is diagnosed. With support from Canada’s three federal research funding agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, he and his team help doctors detect disease and guide treatments more precisely. Focusing on ovarian, endometrial, prostate and many other cancers, his research uses data and new algorithms to better understand how these cancers develop and respond to treatment.
Research for a better Canada – Dr. Ali Bashashati - Transcript
We are trying to solve two problems. One is better diagnostics for cancer. The second one is better treatment or personalizing treatments.
Diagnosis of cancer is done by looking at tissue samples, suspected tissue samples under the microscope. And what we do is digitize them and use AI to find patterns that will help us to make better diagnostic models, but also like make models that can help us tailor the treatments. But one size doesn’t fit all patients, so what we are trying to do is to customize the treatments for the patients, because each tumour is different.
So federal funding is important to de-risk these high-risk ideas and then hopefully, you know, move things forward that eventually make a difference in terms of, you know, outcome for patients.
Benefit of conducting research in Canada is mainly, I think, the ecosystem that we have in health care.
We have all these, you know, major biobanks, you know, that we can actually tap into because for AI, we need a lot of data.
AI is very objective; human, subjective. So it doesn't get tired, basically. So looking at all these stuff and then, objectively, eventually you would hope that, you know, you can find patterns that will help early detection, better diagnosis or better treatments.
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"AI is very objective; human, subjective. So it doesn't get tired, basically. So looking at all these stuff and then, objectively, eventually ... you can find patterns that will help early detection, better diagnosis or better treatments."