The 4th edition of the Diploma Program in Artificial Intelligence Applied to Medical Diagnosis has begun
With an in-person class at the UC San Joaquín Campus, the fourth edition of the program kicked off last Friday, September 25. The program brings together healthcare professionals from different disciplines with the goal of preparing them to lead the adoption of AI in diagnosis and patient care.
The welcome session, held in the DILAB Room, featured talks by three faculty members from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile who are also members of iHEALTH: Dr. Claudia Prieto, the institute's Director, who discussed applications of AI in medical imaging; Dr. Marcelo Andía, Alternate Director, who spoke about its potential in medicine; and Dr. Denis Parra, Principal Investigator, who addressed the use of natural language in healthcare.
"Reaching a fourth edition shows us that there is a real and growing interest among clinical teams in understanding and applying artificial intelligence in their daily work. Our goal is for participants not only to become familiar with these tools, but also to be able to evaluate them critically and incorporate them responsibly for the benefit of patients," said Dr. Claudia Prieto.
Among this cohort's participants is Camila Becerra, a supervising nurse at Clínica Santa María, where she oversees outpatient medical scheduling, the telemedicine area, and external sample collection. "My interest in taking this program comes from a real need to understand how artificial intelligence complements medicine, and how to use these tools, which are evolving every day, to improve our processes: not only patient care, but also our performance indicators, IT and administrative processes, and even reducing workloads," she explains.
Camila joined the program alongside her supervisor, who invited her to take part: "She told me, 'Come with me, we have to get on board, let's do it together.'" She adds: "As one of our professors mentioned, if we as healthcare professionals don't know how to make use of these tools, we'll be left behind."
The diploma program is led by the Millennium Institute for Engineering and Artificial Intelligence for Health (iHEALTH) and developed jointly with the UC Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering, the UC School of Engineering, the UC School of Medicine, and the UC Engineering Office of Professional Education. Its aim is to provide healthcare professionals (such as physicians, medical technologists, nurses, and biomedical engineers, among others) with concrete tools to understand, analyze, and implement Artificial Intelligence technologies in their clinical settings.
Delivered mostly online with live classes, complemented by in-person seminars, the program includes four courses ranging from computational fundamentals to applications of Deep Learning in medicine.
As in previous editions, the faculty is made up of researchers from iHEALTH and UC, who combine solid academic careers with applied experience in artificial intelligence for health.
"With this fourth cohort, the diploma program continues to build an interdisciplinary community of professionals who will play a leading role in the digital transformation of medical diagnosis and prognosis," said Claudia Prieto.
