York University
• Assistant Professor - Department of Mathematics & Statistics
• Executive Director - Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium
• Executive Director - Global South AI for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response Network (AI4PEP)
Assistant Professor Dr. Jude Kong leads the Kong Research Group at Toronto's York University, in addition to being the founding executive director of the Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) and the founding executive director of the Global South Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response Network (AI4PEP). We caught up with him to learn more about his work using AI to improve health in Africa.
What initially inspired your research?
It was really the number of relatives that I lost due to malaria in Shiy, my village in Cameroon. I was raised in a family of 5 by a single mom in a small village. Going to secondary schools was not very common in my village, only a few “well-to-do” families in my village could afford to do that. I was the first in my family to go to secondary school. Eventually, I went to university and came upon a conference on malaria modelling that was going on. That was when I realized that I could use my degree in computer science and mathematics to help people in my community.
How did you become interested in AI?
I’ve always been motivated by helping others like me in communities with poor health systems. When I was studying modelling I realized that AI solutions are proactive rather than reactive. Traditional approaches have been very inadequate and that’s because they are rarely proactive. Communities like the one I come from are far from the central systems. I saw that if I work on tools that are proactive I could strengthen the healthcare systems for people in communities like mine.
What excites you the most about the possibilities of AI in healthcare?
When I was growing up, I never saw a doctor. There was a distant town that was almost two hours away by foot that had one doctor. A lot of people would die on the way to see the doctor. But with AI solutions, and technological advances, it would be possible to help people so they don’t have to go to another town for medical help.
Health and well-being are not just the absence of disease/illness, or infirmity, but the complex combination of several factors. AI-based technology enables the handling of heterogeneous data and the development of dynamic models that are able to analyze new information and provide highly integrated, multi-level forecasts and predictions based on the processing of changing data sets.
I would like to develop digital tools that help people in villages like mine get help from doctors in other cities or even other countries like Canada. That would give me joy! That’s where I see AI playing a big role.
What outcomes do you hope your research will eventually lead to?
I am really excited about advancing responsible AI-based tools in health for pandemics in economically disadvantaged communities. In addition to advancing the responsible development and deployment of AI-based tools I hope my research outputs will include data dashboard and portals, an online searchable repository with locally relevant data resources, and smartphone/web-based applications that collect anonymized data, provide personalized advice to patients, and follow them up to ensure adherence and compliance with treatment.
What is the Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC)?
It's a team of 54 researchers in 9 African countries. ACADIC is deeply engaged in mobilizing Artificial Intelligence and Big Data techniques in an ethical way to build equitable, resilient governance strategies and increase societal preparedness for future global pandemics and climate disasters. We meet every week to develop solutions and transfer knowledge that can be used locally with governments and communities across Africa.
Communities are so important. You can’t stay in a university and say that you know what communities are facing. You can’t solve problems in communities without community involvement.
