MIDL Vision 2020

25 Here is an added value that comes from computer science to medicine! Exactly! You spend one year creating an algorithm, then you spend a half a year to develop the software and establish it in thehospital. Then it helps thedoctors! That is very encouraging because we are not very confident in the beginning as to whether it will be helpful or not. We feel very proud of ourselves! At what age did you feel you wanted to contribute to medicine? It happened in different stages. In the very beginning, I went to college. I did my undergraduate in Beijing. At that time, I was assigned to biomedical engineering. Gradually, I liked it. I went to a relatively newly established college. There were more than enough teachers, so our college allowed undergraduates to enter labs and learn about research. I started to enter the lab starting from my second year as an undergraduate, helping my colleagues with medical image analysis. I wanted to learn more about it, and I felt that it was meaningful. Then I continued to do it. I felt I had the capability to learn the skills. I think that’s a meaningful thing. After I graduated, I decided to pursue a PhD. I applied here to The Chinese University of Hong Kong. At that time, I was determined to go into the healthcare field. I think it is a very promising field. It’s verymeaningful, and it helps people. Around 2014, I started my PhD. That’s when deep learning really started to boom. I quickly picked up this new technology and applied it to medical imaging. This field started to attract more people. My PhD has been very busy, but I enjoyed that very much, because I’m very self-motivated. I work day to night, day to night, but I don’t feel much tired. That’s the magic. After graduating with my PhD, I did some deep thinking about whether to choose academia or industry. Different offers came to me. After very careful consideration and discussions with professors, family, and friends, I got determined to go into a full academic career for AI and for healthcare. What would be a dream accomplishment in AI and healthcare? Wow! That’s a big question! If I had to choose, one thing that makes me super excited is to develop software for machine learning that can be widely applied to multiple hospitals. The “widely” is important.Thegeneralization capabilities of the technology matters. That’s what my current research emphasizes. It can work for one patient, for ten patients, for many patients. If it can work for one hospital, that is also another big thing. But when it can be widely deployed tomultiple hospitals, in multiple regions, in multiple countries, and it really works, then it has a scalable benefit for the patients. That’s the thing I’m excited to do. Qi Dou