HJBR Jan/Feb 2023

46 JAN / FEB 2023  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   Healthcare Briefs and to offer culturally responsive and age- appropriate solutions to these challenges. • YMCA of Bogalusa, which currently offers healthy snacks and meals at its facility to over 200 program participants and will be expanded to allow delivery of healthy meals to additional children and families in need in the community. “Healthcare is so much more than access to quality medical care,” said Vice President of Qual- ity Improvement Yolanda Wilson. “Chosen from more than 50 detailed applications from across the state, these selected projects will allow Loui- siana Healthcare Connections to invest in ‘boots on the ground,’ helping to positively impact our communities by addressing social determinants of health.” Louisiana Healthcare Connections’ Commu- nity Health Grants launched in 2018 as part of the health plan’s efforts to combat food insecu- rity and other health issues in Louisiana. Mary Bird Perkins’ Inaugural Lecture Series Explores Deployment of AI in Cancer Treatment Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center has officially launched its new H.N. Saurage IV Distinguished Lecture series dedicated to innovation in medical physics. On Oct. 20, the Cancer Center welcomed Steve Jiang, PhD, vice chair and chief of the Divi- sion of Medical Physics & Engineering at the Uni- versity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, to serve as the series’ first guest lecturer. Jonas Fon- tenot, PhD, CEO and Dr. Charles M. Smith chief of physics, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and dozens of other Cancer Center team members and students were on hand to hear Jiang present “Thoughts on the Deployment of Artificial Intelli- gence in Clinical Practice.” The lecture focused on several issues facing successful implementation of AI within the realm of medical physics, such as model generalizabil- ity, model deterioration, and model interpretabil- ity. Through the course of the lecture, Jiang iden- tified these key barriers that, in his experience, have limited the ability to leverage the power of AI for use in improving patient cancer care. “AI should know what it does and doesn’t know,” said Jiang, as he proposed a possible use of confidence metrics when reporting AI predic- tions. Key components of his overall approach to successful clinical deployment included con- cepts of transparency, common sense, and utility. “Essentially, there is no magic bullet in AI,” said Jiang. “What works for some will not necessar- ily work for all, and that is okay. The important thing is that we develop AI tools that truly satisfy a particular clinical need and then strive to char- acterize and report the uncertainties, tolerance boundaries, and criteria for safe use of that tool. The oncologists at Mary Bird Perkins an excellent precision medicine and AI programs that are get- ting stronger with time.” Jiang is one of the nation’s foremost experts on medical physics. He has been instrumental in the development of dozens of publications related to AI in medicine and the use of adap- tive radiotherapy. In 2013, he joined the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as a ten- ured full professor, a Barbara Crittenden Profes- sor in Cancer Research, the vice chair of the Radi- ation Oncology Department, and the director of the Medical Physics and Engineering Division. His research interest includes the development and deployment of AI and image processing technol- ogies to solve medical problems. Over the course of Jiang’s career, he has earned numerous awards, including having most recently been elected fel- low in the 2022 class of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Col- lege of Fellows. This lecture is the first of many planned for the newly formed H.N. Saurage IV Distinguished Lec- ture Series in Medical Physics. Supported by the H.N. Saurage IV Family Fund, this lecture series is committed to scientific edu- cation for medical physicists, physicians, and other allied health professionals by inviting dis- tinguished researchers from around the world to travel to Louisiana to discuss their discoveries and share their knowledge. It is also designed to highlight opportunities for future work benefiting patients diagnosed with cancer. The H.N. Sau- rage IV Family Fund provides resources to sup- port travel and accommodations, hosting of the visit, and an honorarium for one invited lecturer each year. The event also highlighted the work that Mary Bird Perkins is doing to cultivate the next David Solis, Jr., PhD, academic medical physicist, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center; Hank Saurage, philanthropist and Cancer Center board member; Steve Jiang, PhD, vice chair and chief of the Division of Medical Physics & Engineering at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Jerry Goss, philanthropist and former Cancer Center board member; Jonas Fontenot, PhD, MBA, CEO and Dr. Charles M. Smith chief of physics, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, attend the inaugural gathering of the H.N. Saurage IV Distinguished Lecture Series in Medical Physics.