Democratizing Public Health Modeling Using AI-based Tools

Yogesh Hooda of the Child Health Research Foundation in Bangladesh will use AI-based tools to teach low- and middle-income scientists to perform modeling and prediction studies in public health, which are dominated by researchers in the Global North. The codes generated during modeling studies are not often shared amongst researchers, making the methods difficult to learn. They found that ChatGPT could produce a code using a published model in just three weeks with only a beginner-level programmer and a biostatistician. Using epidemiological and demographic data and medical records collected from a catchment area, they will adapt published code with the help of ChatGPT to predict the impact of introducing specific vaccines in Bangladesh. They will also develop a curriculum, covering the basics of ChatGPT, data preprocessing and modeling techniques, for a course that they will pilot with public health professionals and students. All materials will be openly available in Bangla and English.