As part of the IDRC-funded research project on “Artificial Intelligence Framework for Threat Assessment and Containment for COVID-19 and Future Epidemics,” a full-day workshop was held at the Pegasus Reef hotel on March 23, 2023. The workshop aimed to raise awareness among health sector employees about the application of AI in the health sector and to gather feedback on the system that the AI4COVID team of the University of Peradeniya developed so as to transform the AI-informed policy into a set of recommendations that policymakers and medical practitioners can access without any barriers.
The workshop was conducted by the research team of the IDRC-funded project, with the participation of three researchers from Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia. The total number of participants was 35 and they are from the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, the Ministry of Health, the University of Kelaniya, the University of Colombo, the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and Sri Lanka Air Force.
The workshop started with Prof. JB. Ekanayake, the Principal Investigator of the project welcoming the participants and outlining the objective of the workshop, and providing an overview of the project. Then Prof. Roshan Godaliyadda and Prof. Parakrama Ekanayake from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering did a session on “AI applications in the health sector with examples from research carried out at the University of Peradeniya.” This was followed by the two research assistants from the project, Mr. Lakshitha Ramanayake and Mr. Neranjan Senarath introducing the Simulation Engine developed by the AI4COVID group. Then Prof. Tiong Sieh Kiong from Universiti Tenaga Nasional did an interactive presentation on “AI application for health sector research activities in Malaysia.” Finally, a group discussion on feedback for the simulation engine to transform its outputs into a set of recommendations that policymakers and medical practitioners can access without any barrier was taken place.
The workshop was a great success and the research team received many positive feedbacks and some conveyed an interest in working in collaboration to improve the work being carried out by the AI4COVID research team.
