From Monday, April 14 to Thursday, April 18, 2024, the University of Copenhagen offered the course Designing Human-Centred AI in Healthcare (2024). It was organized by and with the authors of the ACM TOCHI special issue on "Human-Centred AI in Healthcare: Challenges Appearing in the Wild", in particular Francisco Nunes and Tariq Anderson. 

In several online sessions, the authors presented their papers and discussed with participants topics such as designing human-centered AI for mental health, clinicians’ challenges in the wild, and improving healthcare workflows.

This was followed by a four-day event of lectures and seminars. It began with a discussion of HCI fields and human AI concepts in the medical context. Key issues that need to be considered when working with technologies such as AI in high-stakes domains like healthcare were presented and discussed. Other workshops focused on the design of collaborative AI systems and HCAI concepts. The day ended with a boat trip in Copenhagen and a vegetarian burger at Nyhavn in Popl.

Day 2 focused on design. Among other things, Margot Brereton presented the ideation of AI concepts and allowed the participants to discover user needs themselves. Another highlight of the day was Yvonne Rogers' presentation on prototyping HCAI systems and how to test them with users. For these two lectures the course was already worth it, as their perspectives and experiences are very helpful for newcomers like me.

After design, evaluation and implementation was the topic of day 3. Francisco Nunes and Tariq Anderson gave workshops on design interventions in AI and how people use technology in field trials. I found Nat Benda's presentation on "Preparing for Human-Centered Implementation and Evaluation of AI Systems" particularly exciting. The methodological knowledge and the process of developing large AI systems in reality were extremely interesting.

Finally, we reflected on what we had learned and discussed in small groups what we had learned and how we could apply it to our own research. At the end, we explored the Botanical Garden in the heart of Copenhagen and the AI Pioneer Center.

All in all, I was able to gather many insights and met interesting graduate students and experienced researchers.

Author: Ulrike Schäfer