New year - new resolution

There is a month to go in this year and I thought of a new resolution for the coming year. Of course I have 31 days to change this resolution to another one, should there be any need :)

I have been lately working on a topic that can be broadly called 'machine learning in healthcare'. But the scope is much wider. I have been working on applications of machine learning to tasks in healthcare. By machine learning, I mean, everything that could be traditional statistical inferencing, deep learning, self supervised learning or even reinforcement learning. Also picking up expertise in graph neural networks and an overarching geometric deep learning. By healthcare, I mean topics related to critical care data, and as varied applications as in histology, pathology, radiology, dermatology, speech and many other. I also have been updating myself with newest tools. So I am working on TF+keras, PyTorch, PyTorch lightening, Python, Julia and even Swift. 

I have started feeling lately that the glorified machine learning really is all about finding patterns in data. Sure, the algorithms do better than humans and have tons of applications, but there is a fallacy in the fundamental assumption that all answers lie in the data. To circumvent this, have started forays into causal inference and causal discovery, especially in observational data. The inputs from causality theory will enhance the predictions coming out of machine learning on an average, hopefully. It has been fascinating reading about "lineages" in causal theory and indeed there are "lineages" in statistics itself. Judea Pearl vs Donald Rubin vs Jamie Robins .. and the fights go on when there should be none. 

So now onto the resolution and what has this got to do with it. The idea is to create a writeup on most recent event in the "AI in healthcare" space and I will shed some light with "my own research" (this is in quotes because of recent abuse of the term). The "event" itself could be a paper published in a JAMA or NEJM, could be a policy directives from around the world or even some interesting findings that someone shares that I would feel like commenting on. The "event" could even be a book review.

So welcome to a new resolution and uncharacteristically on the first day of the last month of the year. The posts themselves will be published each weekend starting in 3 days time. Happy reading!