Hosted by the Brown Center for Biomedical Informatics (BCBI), and Advance RI-CTR, the inaugural RI-AI4H Symposium was a full-day event featuring a keynote address from Daniel Z. Sands, MD, MPH, FACP, FACMI; lightning talks from research leaders across Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, and Rhode Island hospitals; and presentations from the finalists of the Data Challenge and Datathon.

In his keynote address, Dr. Sands looked at the impact of artificial intelligence on patient-physician relationships and how physicians can prepare for a world where patients will ask AI for advice before going to a doctor. Dr. Sands’ address was cautiously optimistic about AI usage and gave guidance on how both patients and physicians can use AI in more productive and trustworthy ways.

The teams competing in the Data Challenge and Datathon used SyntheticRI (a synthetic dataset designed to reflect the demographics, health conditions, and lived realities of Rhode Island communities) to develop a practical AI solution to a healthcare challenge in our community.

Ivan Yu, a Brown University student in Philosophy & Neurobiology, had this to say about the Symposium:

“Receiving feedback from experienced individuals from multiple backgrounds across varying professional fields helped me view our project from different perspectives that I would not have considered if analyzing my work alone.”

In an interview with Jonathan Garris for Medicine@Brown, Yu stated that he and his partner Wilber Sean V. Anterola picked cardiovascular diseases as the focus for their healthcare challenge, because heart disease is the leading cause of death in the state, and interestingly they found “gaps between identifying elevated blood pressure readings and ensuring that a patient receives appropriate follow-up.”

Yu said, “We thought that improving this process would have a meaningful impact for those facing barriers to care.”

At the end of the Symposium, after the insightful talks and a lively networking lunch, Ivan Yu and Wilber Anterola were awarded runners up in the Data Challenge and earned a cash prize of $500. The winners, Mala "Models" on Thayer (a five-person team composed of Christopher Chen, Alec Zhu, Annie Wu, Andres Newman, and Umar Sheikh), won a cash prize of $1,000.

RI-AI4H organizers Elizabeth Chen, PhD and Neil Sarkar PhD expressed excitement about bringing the event back in the spring of 2027.