CALLING DR AI

With healthcare costs rising globally, scientist Dean Ho is focusing his efforts on harnessing artificial intelligence for personalised healthcare and not only to save lives but to also biohack one's way to staying healthy for longer

- Karen Tee

In a year where artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzzword, many of us have started experimenting with generative AI, working out how we can use it as a tool to increase productivity. For instance, generative text tools such as ChatGPT might provide the nudge needed to get one’s creative juices flowing, while text‑to‑image platforms such as Midjourney and Dall‑E produce pictures in a fraction of the time needed to create one from scratch.

But Dean Ho, the recipient of the Tatler Hero Award in 2022, is already light years ahead in envisioning how AI could be used for a greater purpose. In his view, the way an individual engages with and prompts these programs could potentially be used to track their cognitive capabilities, creating opportunities for early intervention and, if necessary, treatment for cognitive decline.

“Beyond people using it to write their homework for them and stuff like that, I think ChatGPT could be used as a diagnostic where, over time, when people engage with chat tools, you can monitor symptoms such as cognitive decline,” says the director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) and the N.1 Institute for Health. “When used with discipline and by following certain best practices, things such as ChatGPT are potentially huge enablers.”

Indeed, he has made it his calling to do more with AI in digital medicine. The provost’s chair professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore’s College of Design and Engineering, who is also a 2019 Gen.T honouree, has been harnessing this technology to innovate personalised healthcare treatments in fields ranging from oncology to digital therapeutics and infectious diseases.