Imagine this scenario: Doctors know a small number of patients will face life-threatening complications after an illness, but they need to scan millions of records to identify the patients in need of intervention. It’s a task that would consume weeks and keep practitioners from other care needs.
At UC Davis Health, a team used artificial intelligence to solve this challenge. They scanned 3 million health records, identifying over 11,000 patients at risk of a life-threatening aneurysm, leading to surgeries saving over thirty lives.
This is just one example of how UC Davis is using AI to revolutionize care.
I’ve been fascinated by the potential of this work for decades. As an electrical engineer in the 1990s, I explored early neural networks, the foundation of modern AI, as tools for complex problem-solving. Today, these technologies are emerging across our campus, empowering clinicians to improve health and quality of life.
As this future of healthcare emerges in real time, we share a responsibility to use AI ethically, with the patient always at the center. We are committed to leading its responsible development, enabling providers and researchers to engage more productively and creatively in care while honoring diverse human perspectives.
This approach to AI is critical to the future of our health care system, as it ensures the most vulnerable patients and those facing the most complex medical needs receive compassionate care from the bedside to the operating room.
Our interdisciplinary research in AI is grounded in this commitment to the public good, driving transformative interventions that improve access to care and enhance treatment effectiveness, and ensuring that innovations developed in Davis serve patients across California and around the world.
One of the most exciting examples is in diabetes care. When associate professor Sam King and his son were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, he saw the challenges of monitoring his blood glucose levels and parenting a child with a chronic condition. He was inspired to develop the BeaGL metabolic watchdog, a system that delivers real-time, predictive health information to an app on the user’s phone, easing the burden of care. Working with UC Davis Health diabetes researchers, King hopes to make the technology available to the millions of Americans with diabetes.
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Our interdisciplinary research is also developing the next generation of prosthetic limbs. The complexity of the interactions among the electrical signals that control muscle movement has long been a profound challenge. Now, our researchers in the College of Engineering and the College of Biological Sciences are exploring artificial intelligence applications that will not only speed these connections, enabling more natural movement, but also personalize prosthetics that can learn from and adapt to each user’s needs.
We know that holistic health extends to the dining room, too. A new $2 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund is driving a partnership between UC Davis and the American Heart Association to use AI to redesign foods for the modern kitchen. The research aims to “reimagine what food can be,” creating tools that allow anyone — from a home cook to a large-scale farmer — to develop new ingredients and flavor combinations for healthier, more environmentally sustainable meals.
These novel applications don’t remain in our labs. Forty-five optimized AI models are already in use at UC Davis Health, where they help detect diseases earlier, advance new treatment models and save lives.
With strokes, the No. 5 cause of death in the United States, speedy intervention is critical. Doctors are using an AI platform that analyzes patient scans and immediately alerts care teams, enabling faster intervention that reduces damage and improves outcomes.
This AI-augmented screening also extends to cancer care. From breast to liver cancer, clinicians use AI to screen patients more accurately and increase treatment success and survival rates. One promising application is colorectal cancer, one of the fastest-growing cancers in the United States, where AI helps identify high-risk patients and assist scan analysis so doctors can begin appropriate treatment sooner.
Our leadership in the AI revolution is centered on empowering innovators and healthcare practitioners. The vision that first sparked my curiosity as a young researcher decades ago matches our vision at UC Davis. I’m inspired every day by the development of technology and human potential that make our community and the world a healthier place.
To learn more about how we are leading the way in medical research and AI, I encourage you to visit our From Labs to Lives site. Learn more about these life-changing innovations and help us build a healthier tomorrow by sharing them with the people in your lives.
Chancellor Gary S. May’s monthly column is published in The Davis Enterprise and Dateline UC Davis.