BIR AI Conference 2023
An interview with Dr. Gerald Lip
The BIR AI Conference is taking place on March 23-24 in London. This interesting event will be held across two days with sessions appealing to a multidisciplinary audience including radiologists, radiographers, physicists, oncologists as well as other healthcare professionals and those with an interest in AI. We are lucky enough to know Dr Gerald Lip, the organiser of this event quite well, as he has been reporting for the TMC Neuro Section since 2013. That´s why we got the chance to ask him a few questions about the BIR AI conference:
TMC: You are the organizer of the BIR AI event in London this week, what can we expect and what are you looking forward to most?
GL: The good news is that the congress is now fully sold out with a record turnout again this year. This reflects the continuing and growing interest in AI as we have had to move the congress to a larger venue every year we have run it.
This year we are seeing more and more examples of mature AI, running in clinical environments and the conversation is moving on to larger platform-based deployments and the monitoring and safety aspects of working with AI.
I’m looking forward to hearing from my breast imaging colleague from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden on his rollout of a national screening AI monitoring platform.
TMC: What fascinates you about AI?
GL: The potential to help the radiologist and reduce our errors via a combination of automation and decision support. Well-designed safe AI has the potential to standardise care and ensure equity of health treatment regardless of income, location, gender, or ethnicity.
TMC: How has AI helped you as a radiologist?
GL: It has helped me review my own practice and focus on maintaining the patient at the centre of our activity. All this technology and development must be patient-centred to allow radiologists to deliver the best care.
TMC: What do you think the future holds for AI in radiology?
GL: The future is very promising, and I see AI as part of our workflow whether in the background or alongside radiologists easing their workload, giving helpful pointers, and picking up the slack. I see it being integrated into other parts of the workflow from chatbots to bookings and into other ‘ologies. Already the pathology AI field is growing really fast
More about Dr. Gerald Lip:
Dr Gerald Lip has been with Unilabs’ TMC since 2013, reporting for the Neuro Section. He is the Clinical Director for breast screening in the Northeast of Scotland and the Principal Investigator of the GEMINI prospective evaluation of mammography artificial intelligence supported by the NHS National Strategy for AI in Health and Social Care. He has recently completed a four-year retrospective research project on the same topic with the Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Diagnostics in Scotland.
Dr Lip has recently been awarded a two-year Innovation Fellowship by the Chief Scientists Office of Scotland to lead innovation adoption in the NHS. He is the vice chair of the British Society of Breast Radiology and sits on the UK Royal College of Radiology Informatics committee, on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Doctoral Training for Biomedical AI at Edinburgh University and is a scientific advisor to the National Covid Chest Imaging Database.
Dr Lip is active in research, education, and training publishing on work with radiology trainees in AI, opinions on the member of the public and professional colleagues on AI and also sits on the British Institute of Radiology AI special interest group leading on education.
A graduate of Trinity College Medicine, along with his medical degree he also qualified with an MSc in Health Informatics and completed his radiology training in Aberdeen. He is an honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Aberdeen. Dr Lip has published and spoken on topics nationally and internationally such as patient engagement, innovation in breast imaging techniques, quality assurance and safety and monitoring in AI.
