AI and data science in the age of COVID-19
Tuesday 24 Nov 2020
Time: 09:30 - 16:30
Bio
Maxine's expertise are at the intersection of health and genomics, equity and diversity, and data science and AI. She is an organiser in the Turing’s Health Equity Special Interest Group where she primarily focuses on promoting data diversity, fairness in AI, and raising awareness of the issues of health data bias. She previously setup and led the Diverse Data initiative at Genomics England, a new £25m initiative which was launched to reduce health inequalities in genomic medicine through a range of data-generation, engagement, and analytical and tool-building activities. Maxine is the co-founder of One HealthTech – a global, volunteer-led, grassroots community that supports and promotes under-represented groups in health innovation. OHT has over 20,000 contributors worldwide across 20 Hubs which have collectively delivered over 1000 events, projects, campaigns and initiatives improving diversity in healthtech. She also set up Data Science for Health Equity, a community of practice that brings together those with expertise in data science and health inequalities to connect and collaborate on cutting-edge domains in health. She has been part of a number of communities and committees including being a Non-Executive Director for the Eastern Academic Health Science Network, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers, and the British Computer Society (Health Exec) and the DeepMind Health Independent Review Board. She is currently a Sciana Fellow, a 2 year fellowship for health policy leaders.
Research interests
With the increasing digitisation of health, care and life sciences, there is great potential to transform the way we predict, prevent, treat and understand health and disease. However, the data-ification of healthcare and research is not without its risks. Huge swathes of the population are missing in health datasets, we see countless examples of algorithms automating and encoding societal biases in health and we still live in a world with enormous inequalities in resources, funding and skills to support the digital revolution in health. Maxine’s research interests lie in ensuring data science is as fair and equity-enhancing as possible in health. Whilst her interests span a range of health data modalities, most recently she has been focussed on this in the context of genomics.
Studies of human genetics have largely been on populations from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries which has resulted genomic insights that are not generalisable to all populations. Most studies, trials and papers conclude with a call to action to recruit and use more diverse participants, and yet the proportion of non-European ancestries in genomic studies is diminishing. To address this gap, it is essential to work across the whole pipeline of genomic research and health care delivery, from the populations we work with and the data we collect, to the analyses we carry out and the availability of genetic testing.
She applied herself to solving this in the context of Genomics England's Diverse Data initiative, however prior to this (and alongside her stint in government) Maxine’s research looked at applying machine learning methods to health, care and life science challenges, and also explored the ethical impacts these approaches had. Maxine was a Research Associate and Fellow working between The Alan Turing Institute, The Health Foundation and the University of Oxford where she primarily worked with Prof Chris Holmes. Her postdoc focused on exploring the boundaries of what we define as “health” data, and how we can infer how healthy or sick people are, based on their financial, geospatial, social or transactional consumer data. Prior to this she completed a PhD at UCL’s Institute of Health Informatics (and was a Turing Enrichment Student) where her work looked at using novel statistical methods to detect early signs of dementia in electronic health records. She also completed an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing (LSE & LSHTM) and a BSc in Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience & Pharmacology (UCL).
