To the UC Davis community:
 
As an electrical engineer investigating early neural networks in the 1990s, I dreamed of a future where artificial intelligence, or AI, could build a healthier, more connected community. Today, that future has arrived, and UC Davis stands at the forefront of this transformation.
 
This AI revolution is reshaping the global economy. A recent McKinsey & Company report projects that AI will generate over $4 trillion in economic growth and create new job opportunities across the workforce.
 
Nowhere is this revolution more evident than in health care. As Associate Clinical Professor Carolina Reyes said at an event last year, AI is “here to stay and going to revolutionize what we do.” As it advances across health care — from research to record-keeping — future providers and innovators must understand not only how to use these tools but also their design, biases, and limitations.
 
In the workplace of the future, fluency in artificial intelligence will no longer be optional; it will be foundational. At UC Davis and UC Davis Health, we are actively shaping that future. We envision a world where artificial intelligence enhances human health care, benefiting communities and safeguarding individual health.

Advancing patient treatment

Students like Peggy Zhu, who graduated in June with a degree in electrical and computer engineering and is now working toward her doctorate at UC Davis, exemplify this commitment. She says the most important aspect of AI literacy is to equip researchers with more effective tools to tackle increasingly complex problems.
 
Her senior design team’s award-winning project used smart home sensors and AI to sense movement, collecting health data to detect urinary tract infections. This research presents a novel solution that enables caregivers to safeguard patient privacy, reduce paperwork and enhance at-home care without the need for intrusive monitoring.
 
Her work highlights the potential of interdisciplinary AI to treat patients with ailments as serious as Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers Chen-Nee Chuah and Brittany Dugger are partnering in a five-year initiative to leverage artificial intelligence to better uncover signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the Latinx community, which is disproportionately affected by the disease, in order to advance treatment for all patients.
 
An example of this research has the potential to reshape treatment for Type 1 diabetes, which affects more than 2 million Americans. Traditional glucose monitoring alerts patients only after an imbalance occurs, but the BeaGL “metabolic watchdog” developed at the College of Engineering uses machine learning to predict changes before they happen. By shifting to proactive intervention, patients, particularly adolescents, can reduce stress and enjoy better long-term disease management.
 
This type of research is already improving outcomes for patients across UC Davis Health, where more than 45 optimized AI models, with more than a dozen in pilot programs, are aiding in stroke care, sepsis detection and surgical decision-making. These models empower doctors and nurses to deliver faster, better-informed interventions, leading to increased survival rates and improved health outcomes for patients.

Preventing disease

In addition to treating illness, UC Davis researchers are deploying AI to prevent it.
 
Professor Jingwen Zhang’s AI chatbot crafts personalized messages that encourage physical activity, a crucial component of a healthy lifestyle. In an initial experiment, a 10-minute chat boosted the intention to exercise by 37%. This innovative approach extends beyond simple reminders, using humor to foster a positive relationship with users, demonstrating how AI can be a highly effective tool for promoting preventive behaviors and improving health outcomes.
 
AI tools like this can also strengthen community and public health. A recent cross-disciplinary collaboration between the College of Biological Sciences and the College of Letters and Science demonstrates how AI can be a critical tool in warning us about the next pandemic. Using data from known coronaviruses, the model offers the potential to identify viruses with a high likelihood of infecting humans, giving policymakers and health care providers time to prevent an outbreak.

“In the workplace of the future, fluency in artificial intelligence will no longer be optional; it will be foundational.”

Empowering providers and patients

At the heart of our AI integration in health is a crucial idea: We can best use artificial intelligence not to replace health care providers and researchers, but to augment their abilities. Whether it’s conducting research scans on a massive scale or streamlining the detailed record-keeping modern medicine demands, careful application of AI will empower healers to dedicate more time to direct patient care and focus on the complex needs of the patients they serve.
 
A recent UC Davis Health initiative shows how this shift saves lives. Using AI, our researchers scanned 3 million patient records and identified more than 11,000 people with potentially life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysms. The team scheduled consultations and even surgeries for those who needed them most, saving 32 lives by intervening before a dangerous rupture — a feat made possible only when AI empowered surgeons to locate and reach patients identified by the system.
 
AI is also advancing personalized cancer care through earlier detection and intervention. A team at the UC Davis Center for Precision Medicine and Data Sciences is researching potential ways to use a machine-learning model to predict which patients should be screened for liver cancer, one of the fastest-growing cancers in the world, offering hope to the more than 800,000 people diagnosed with it worldwide every year. 
 
We’re also leading national studies to evaluate the effectiveness of AI applications to determine how they can best help patients. A team at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is co-leading a $16 million study to investigate how effective AI is for breast cancer screenings, vital work to uncover the most effective tools to fight the second leading cause of death for women in the United States.

Ensuring accountability in AI

That work demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that this future reaches every community and patient. Because emerging technologies may not reflect every community’s needs, UC Davis builds diversity into AI design from the start.
 
According to an article published in The Lancet, a group of over 350 researchers from 58 countries agree that reducing bias in AI requires addressing the underlying sources of information and increasing transparency about the data used to train, evaluate and monitor these systems.
 
This isn’t a hypothetical concern. Researchers have discovered that algorithms determining eligibility for kidney transplants, prospects for heart surgery and diagnoses for breast cancer have undermined care for millions. We know that health care for all demands that we consider the diversity of our communities, from research to care and from diagnosis to treatment.
 
Across our campus, we’re building care with that idea in mind. A team of experts across various fields at UC Davis Health developed the BE-FAIR model to ensure that the development of AI predictive models does not replicate existing health disparities, protecting the well-being of every member of our community.

UC Davis is leading the way

We stand at a critical moment for health and education. Responsible AI offers vast potential to expand student opportunities and advance research that improves lives at home and in hospitals.
 
We are committed to being leaders in this space. Earlier this year, our AI Council released its recommendations for the adoption of artificial intelligence on campus, highlighting our current leadership in research and clinical applications. Its recommendations call for development that is transparent, accurate and accountable, while building the training and infrastructure to innovate boldly and safely. A shining example of this can been seen in UC Davis Health’s AI Oversight Committee, a multidisciplinary governance committee that approves AI solutions for use in the Health System, ensuring that they are safe, accurate, fair, and ethical before they are used in clinical settings.
 
In a sign of our leadership, the National Science Foundation awarded UC Davis $5 million to operate the Artificial Intelligence Institutes Virtual Organization, which will serve as a hub connecting AI institutes across the country, accelerating collaboration and public-private partnerships.
 
When I was working on those early neural networks, my colleagues and I could only imagine the potential of AI. Today, we’re witnessing it transform health care, empowering patients, providers and researchers to build healthier lives for every member of our community.
 
UC Davis will continue to lead the way.
 
Sincerely,
 
Gary S. May