Bridging Perspectives: Engaging with Causality Across Research Sectors

Early Career Researchers (ECRs) at the Causality in Healthcare AI (CHAI) Hub are excited to invite researchers from across different sectors to join our upcoming in-person workshop to talk together about causality and healthcare.

This workshop aims to provide a springboard for ECRs in developing their career as cross-disciplinary researchers in causality. We will achieve this through:

• Fostering a wider understanding of how causal approaches are used to address problems in healthcare across academic, clinical, and industrial sectors.
• Exploring how causality is perceived and discussed through different disciplinary lenses, often leading to varied lexicons, and work towards building a common channel for communication and engagement.

Targeting ECRs from healthcare, machine learning, statistics and related areas, this interactive session seeks to achieve several key objectives:

• Establish clearer lines of communication and map the landscape of causal researchers across sectors by providing a networking opportunity for ECRs, but also through facilitated discussions targeting communication challenges.
• Understand real-world problems where causality has been and can be useful by inviting speakers from academia, healthcare and industry, and inviting ECRs to present their research in causality.
• Provide an opportunity for ECRs to get career advice through a career panel with invited speakers who have differing backgrounds and levels of experience.
• Identify training gaps and useful resources for ECRs wanting to get involved in interdisciplinary and collaborative projects.
• Showcase the research currently being undertaken by ECRs in the variety of fields through a poster session.

Main activities

3 keynote talks

1. Dr Ava Khamseh (University of Edinburgh; academia)
2. Dr Kathryn Banfill (Christie NHS Foundation Trust; healthcare)
3. TBA (industry)

Panel group discussion

• A follow up on the keynote talks

ECR career advice roundtable

• With keynote speakers

Community discussion

• Work in groups on selected topics (methods, communication, careers)

Poster session and networking

• Bring your own poster (see details below)
• Best poster award!

Lunch will be provided for everyone

A full agenda will be circulated closer to event’s date.

Posters

We are inviting all participants to bring and present their poster. Both new and previously presented work are acceptable. Due to limited space, a selection process will be employed in case we receive a high volume of poster submissions that exceeds our venue capacity. An independent committee will select the best poster on the day that will be followed with a prize awarded to the poster presenter. If you wish to present a poster during the event, please indicate so in the registration process and include relevant details.

CHAI Hub

CHAI is the Causality in Healthcare AI Hub that unites an international consortium of universities, industry partners, government bodies, and regulatory entities to develop cutting-edge causal AI innovations to enhance patient care and outcomes.

We are working to develop an explainable causal AI platform specifically addressing unique challenges from healthcare across prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. We believe that to move AI forward, we need to build models incorporating both theory and observation. This will create models that are more transportable, explainable, fair, and of more direct relevance for decision support.

The CHAI Hub co-develops research with clinical experts, policy makers, and patients to address complex and heterogenous data structures, nuanced real-world problems, and a rapid pathway to societal and economic impact.