CVPR Daily - Tuesday

21 DAILY CVPR Tuesday At the beginning, I contributed to our R&D meetings and I was part of the product design, but very soon I had to shift to a business role and Majid took the leadership on the technology side, AI and all of that. Because of my multi- disciplinary training in dermatology and technology, I had that technical part covered. I knew enough as a CEO to be able to lead the business side - accounting, finance, HR, marketing. Did you have any second thoughts about getting into business? No second thoughts! But after my PhD, I continued with my postdoc for about 14 or 16 months. That gave me the opportunity to taste the academic side as well. I was a research associate in the academic side. I could apply for grants and have my students. I had these two paths: go to academia or go to industry, or both in parallel for some time. Academia was too slow for me. Business was what I decided to focus on. I decided to step down from my academic position and focus on the business. You have difficulties, you have ups and downs, we all have those, but I never thought I should have done something else. If you asked me what I would do if I could go back, I would pick the same. Maybe I’d make a few changes along the way, but I’m very happy with the direction. I’d like to ask about MetaOptima. What do you guys do? At the beginning, I remember pitching to our team that we are in the business of saving lives. Whatever we do, we need to make sure we are also doing it well in a good vehicle. So that vehicle is for all of us to contribute and bring our research expertise and our great scientific results to life. We create products and serve patients and doctors globally. MetaOptima empowers doctors with software and hardware applications to be better at what they do, to be more efficient. At one of the lectures, I was talking about technology to help doctors be more efficient and decrease their stress. We help doctors to be better at diagnosis and treatment decisions at everyday practice. AI can hugely contribute to the quality of care, not just from the diagnostic perspective but also from treatment decisions, managing and monitoring patients. Doctors are working every day to serve these patients. If they have a better life, if they have more time to spend with their patients, rather than spending time on bureaucracy, documenting patients, and so many things happening at their crazy, busy office, that will have an impact. AI in workflow, AI in optimization, AI in reducing costs, AI in saving time - those are all as important as AI in diagnostics. MaryamSadeghi