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Subject: [AISWorld] CFP: Special Issue of IJERPH (impact factor 3.39) on "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Public and Global Health: Promises, Expectations and Reality"
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 10:06:40 -0400
From: A K <arnold.kamis@gmail.com>
To: aisworld@lists.aisnet.org


AI-driven health interventions and delivery have already started affecting
the management of health services—from clinical decision making and
predictions of mortality risk and healthcare planning to identifying
disease outbreaks—thus addressing challenges in Public and Global Health.
In this Special Issue, we would like to welcome papers which discuss the
problems of suitability, reliability, and expectations of AI, learning, and
predictive technologies in the Public/Global Health domains. This includes
debates on the initiative for creating explainable and accountable AI to
the public and to public health organizations. We would also like to
receive papers which focus on the accuracy of the prediction apparatus used
for forecasting in the time of pandemics, which may reveal their various
perceptions, including public healthcare management and behavioral issues
of individuals as well as societies. The three main themes of the Special
Issue are itemized below. However, we also welcome any other research in
progress and experiences of using learning and predictive technologies when
the management of Public Health depends on our own manipulation of data and
information generated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We welcome papers in three areas of Artificial Intelligence intersecting
with Public/Global Health.

1. Learning and predictive technologies facilitating Public Health sectors’
decision making: trends, feasibility studies, practicality,
trustworthiness, and expectations:

- Predictive and learning technologies in the context of managing PHO
domain knowledge including the impact of individual behavior and group
dynamics to organizational impacts and government policies;
- Text and data mining, text sentiment analysis, and public opinions for
the Public Health sector and their impact on decision making;
- Collaboration between PHO professionals and computer scientists: from
creating joint, sustainable, reliable, and accountable AI algorithms to
dealing with uncertainty, validation of models, interaction effects, and
combinations (ensembles) of modeling principles;
- PHO practices based on case-based, history-based, rule-based, or
regression-based reasoning versus predictive and logic based computational
inference typical of ML and AI algorithms;
- Transparency of AI and predictive models/algorithms to PHO
professionals and policymakers: searching for technically rigorous and
accurate models and opaque black-boxes, or looking at the levels of their
explainabilities, interpretability, and intuitiveness for PHO;
- Detecting paradigm shift in PHO regarding the deployment of AI:
searching for new models and expectations from AI promises. Public Health
practitioners’/policymakers’ approaches to dealing with black-box model
values in layman’s terms;
- AI accountability to public, PHO practitioners, policy makers and
governments: awareness of bringing new software technologies, computational
methods, and data processing to address issues and problems of PHO and
their decision making;

2. The accuracy of traditional statistic forecasting in time of pandemics
and impact of data/software tools on their results:

- Statistical and epidemiological models for predicting the outcome of
epidemic/pandemic: characteristics, features, and parametrization (the role
of R and its impact on modeling);
- Impact of human behavior, healthcare organization functions, and
efficient governance on statistical models in times of epidemics/pandemics;
- Addressing the potentially biased nature of statistical models:
provisions for uncertainty, validation, testing, and quality;
- Improving the accuracy of the statistical models: from deploying
software tools and collection/manipulation of abundance of data to creating
new computational models and using predictive and learning technologies
with AI algorithmic computing;

3. Statistical models versus computational models versus data models: do
they affect each other and do we understand the impact of their potential
inter-relationship on modeling and predictions in the times of pandemics?
Perceptions of pandemics, from governance, political decisions, and
healthcare management to cultural and behavioral issues of individuals and
societies:

- Human perception in modeling, predicting, and communicating the
results of a pandemic; the impact of human behavior on the modeling and
interpretation/communication of modeling results;
- Converting the results of modeling and predictions into clear
messages, best practices, and adaptable procedures when managing and living
during the pandemic, applicable to various types of audience;
- Assessing risks in the pandemic: how citizens, healthcare
professionals, business leaders, government leaders, opinion leaders, and
celebrities assess the risks, costs, and benefits of different responses to
the management of the pandemic;
- Scientific evidence versus persuasion when managing pandemics and
making decisions: understanding the difference between abstract
modeling/predictions and real life situations;
- Going a step further beyond a list of DOs and DON’Ts when managing a
pandemic by creating accurate, precise, and actionable perceptions; making
modeling intrinsically sensitive to different cultures, debating a tradeoff
between “saving lives” and downturns in economies, sharing information and
data across borders, and developing trust among different parties and
political establishments;
- Debating pandemics as an (un)avoidable, treatable, preventable,
natural phenomenon and the source for learning from the experiences of
others.


For more information, see
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/special_issues/Promises_Expectations_Reality


Best Regards,


Arnold Kamis, Brandeis University
Radmila Juric, University of South Eastern Norway
Sang C. Suh, Texas A&M University-Commerce
*Guest Editors*
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