Leveraging AI Thoughtfully: Week of May 3, 2024

 

Dear Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,

Greetings from our Elkins Park campus where we have welcomed a new family of goslings on campus (short video attached). Our students have been busy completing final exams and practicals, as faculty prepare grades. Only a couple of weeks until Spring Commencement! Here are some other items I hope you will find of interest:

COMMUNITY COLLABORATION: The Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Salus University has continued a long-standing collaboration with Head Start programs in the Philadelphia area for more than 35 years. Head Start is a primarily federally funded program that provides education, health and social services to families with children aged three, four and five. For PCO/Salus, this has meant contributing to a variety of services, including primary eye care exams at Head Start centers and schools in the Philadelphia area. Click here to read more.

MERITORIOUS HONORS FOR SLP: The University’s Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) students really raised the bar when it came to their capstone projects this year. Out of the seven meritorious posters chosen to be featured at the annual Pennsylvania Speech-Language-Hearing Association (PSHA) convention April 10-13 in Pittsburgh, two of those were from research conducted by Salus SLP students. For details, click here.

O&P KENYA TRIP: During a humanitarian trip to Kenya, Victoria “Tori” Page ‘25O&P had a young patient who hadn’t walked since her leg amputation the previous year. Tori spent a long time working on a prosthesis trying to make her patient as comfortable as possible. At the end of her appointment, Tori asked the patient how her new leg felt. “She looked at me with a big smile and said, ‘I’m walking!’” Read more here about the O&P humanitarian trip to Kenya.

A SPECIAL PA OLYMPICS: This year’s PA Olympics took on a little more significance for students in the Physician Assistant Studies (PA) program at Salus because it honored one of the University’s former faculty members, Adam Moore, MHS, PA-C, ATC. Adam was an assistant professor for the Salus PA program from 2016 to 2022 and at Thomas Jefferson University until his passing in September 2023. During his time at Salus, Moore had served as a faculty advisor for the PA Olympics. Click here for additional details on the event.

DREXEL DEI RECOGNITION: Drexel Alumni is the recipient of the 2024 Alumni Association Inclusive Excellence Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. In its inaugural year, this award recognizes Drexel Alumni for its programs, culture, and initiatives that encourage and support diversity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging for all alumni, across racial and ethnic backgrounds, sexual and gender identities, religions, socio-economic statuses and more. Read more here.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I have spent the last two days in DC this week attending the Special Medical Advisory Group for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs where I am the designated representative for optometry. Every time I attend these meetings, I am extremely impressed with all that the VA is doing to improve health care for our Veteran population. Administering the nation’s largest integrated health system, the VA is leading the way in digital health integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital solutions responsibly and effectively into VA care. It’s a daunting task when you consider there are over 9-million veterans enrolled in the system.

One process the VA has been using to select the right industry partner to help them integrate AI into their patient care processes is called “AI Sprint.” AI Sprints are three-month competitive engagements that foster collaboration among industry, academia and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Sprints are staged with specific challenges introduced into the process every 3 weeks to determine how teams might mitigate them. I see great value in academia adopting similar processes to devise solutions to some of the novel challenges we face in our higher ed/healthcare ecosystem. As we attempt to leverage AI and related technologies, we need to embrace best practices ensuring cybersecurity, patient, and student safety as well as accuracy and reliability. Our partnership with Drexel will help operationalize some of these processes

It looks like the weekend is going to be a bit cooler than it has been, so try and get out and enjoy the beautiful Spring weather while it still lasts. As you get to the last weeks of the semester, keep your eye on the ball concerning your studies and continue to look out for one another to remain SALUS STRONG!

- Mike