Lauren Wilcox

Lauren Wilcox: Participatory approaches to AI in digital health and well-being

Mar 16, 2021

Advances in computing technology continue to offer us new insights about our health and well-being. As mutually reinforcing trends make the use of wearable and mobile devices routine, we now collect personal, health-related data at an unprecedented scale. Meanwhile, electronic health record (EHR) systems continue to evolve. In response, ML/AI-driven solutions are making use of data incorporating multitudinous dimensions of our health. How can researchers take inclusive approaches to envisioning solutions, training data, and deploying AI/ML-driven solutions? Who should be involved in decisions about how to use ML/AI in digital health and well-being solutions, and even what solutions matter in the first place? In this talk, I will discuss participatory approaches to designing digital health and well-being technologies with patients, family members, and clinicians. I will provide an overview of studies focusing on how human communication, health management practices, and interactions with health-related data point to lessons for uniting computing advancements with people’s needs. Starting with field studies in clinics exploring how people navigated use of a deployed, diagnostic AI system, and then moving onto collaborative design approaches for supporting chronic condition management in families, I will discuss participatory approaches that can be used throughout the technology design, development, and evaluation process to bring human-centered design to new solutions.Lauren Wilcox, PhD, is a research lead in the Google Wellbeing Lab. She brings over thirteen years of experience conducting human-centered computing research in service of human health and well-being. Previously at Google Health, Wilcox led initiatives to align AI advancements in healthcare with the needs of clinicians, patients, and their family members. Wilcox also holds an associate professor position in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. She received a CAREER award from the NSF and a Dissertation Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She has authored several recognized papers (e.g., papers receiving editor's choice designation, best paper, and best paper honorable mention). Wilcox was named a Senior Member of the ACM in 2020. She was an inaugural member of the ACM Future of Computing Academy. She frequently serves on the organizing and technical program committees for premier conferences in the field (e.g., ACM CHI). Wilcox received her PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2013.


 
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