On the 24th and 25th of October 2024, the annual AR&D Retreat took place. With all the public attention and mysteriousness of what this technology actually is and what you can do with it, it was only a matter of time before this year’s theme would be announced: Artificial Intelligence.
The 2024 Retreat took place in the Soesterberg venue and kicked of with four inspiring keynote speakers with prof. Henk Marquering (professor in the application of AI on medical image analysis at Amsterdam UMC), prof. Martijn Schut (professor in translational AI in Laboratory medicine at Amsterdam UMC), dr. Elisabeth Kooi (Neonatologist and associate professor at UMC Groningen) and dr. Beatrijs van der Hout (assistant professor at TU Eindhoven).
Henk Marquering opened the session by reflecting on AI’s evolution in healthcare, detailing the “AI winters and summers” where AI failed to materialize and did not meet the high expectations. These examples showed us to be humble about what AI can bring to clinical practice and his talk ended with some promising examples where AI did in fact make it to clinical practice and how to get there. Martijn Schut showed us how AI models have increased in complexity and how to bring AI from bench to bedside. A matter of life-and-death case was brought to us by Elisabeth Kooi, who explained how to use a model in end-of-life decisions in neonatology. Lastly, a future case technology was presented by dr. Beatrijs van der Hout, who is working on the development of an artificial womb for extremely preterm born infants. We might see this technology materialize and see in clinical practice somewhere in the future.
Pitch winner
In the afternoon, it was time for the PhD candidates to present pitches they prepared. Distributed over multiple rooms, the students were judged by pairs of principle investigators, who selected the best pitch per room. In a subsequent plenary session, the four finalists competed together to win a final prize of €1000! Congratulations to Maryam Khelil for the Best Pitch prize! The 1stday of the Retreat was closed by a networking opportunity, dinner and a social event.
The second day kicked off with either a boxing/bootcamp lesson or for the people who wanted to kick of the day a bit more relaxed, a Tai Chi lesson. After breakfast the attendees could participate in workshops like the use of Virtual Reality in healthcare, grant writing, research and AI or the impact of social media and research.
A tech-driven introduction: AI's role in our event
As mentioned above, the panel members were introduced through a short podcast episode created by AI. This innovative approach was quite successful, although there were some challenges with pronouncing Dutch names. Listen to this episode here.
The Retreat ended with a final plenary session which involved a panel discussion on the readiness of AI in healthcare. First, the panel members where introduced by a short podcast episode which was created by AI, and which succeeded very much by doing so, apart from some difficulties with pronouncing Dutch names. The panel discussion was greatly led by moderator prof. Judith Huirne and the panel members dr. Robert de Leeuw (gynaecologist at Amsterdam UMC), prof. Julia van Weert (professor at UvA), Eva de Bock (PhD Candidate at Amsterdam UMC), Sheena Bhagirath (PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC) and last-minute substitute star Janette Huijser (PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC) gave their blunt opinion on whether they think healthcare is ready for AI. Also the audience blended in which resulted in a lively discussion.
Interested in joining the AR&D Retreat Commitee?
You can obtain ECTS when joining the AR&D Retreat Committee.
Email to aranddretreat@amsterdamumc.nl for more information.
We are very much looking forward to next year’s edition!
Photo credits: Martijn Gijsbertsen