Artificial intelligence in health research: Around one million euros for three Bavarian-Canadian collaborative projects

On 10 February 2022, Bavaria's Minister of Science Bernd Sibler and Québec Chief Scientist Professor Rémi Quirion announced the results of a joint call for proposals on artificial intelligence in medicine. On the Bavarian side, scientists from the University Hospital Erlangen, the LMU Klinikum München and the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technische Universität München are involved in the three bilateral collaborative projects, which will be funded with a total of around one million euros over a period of three years.

The corresponding programme "Artificial Intelligence in Health Research" was launched by the Ministry of Science together with the research funding foundation "Fonds de recherche du Québec" (FRQ) in August 2021.

In cooperation with project teams at the Canadian universities of McGill (Montréal), Polytechnique (Montréal) and Université Laval (Québec City), these projects focus on specific applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the treatment of lung cancer and multiple sclerosis, as well as in the development of an AI-assisted wearable device for monitoring respiratory health functions.

The scientific leadership teams of the funded projects:

• Prof. Michael Ingrisch (LMU Klinikum, Munich) and Prof. Philippe Després (Université Laval, Québec): Decision support in lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography.
• Prof. Mark Mühlau (Universitätsklinikum rechts der Isar der Technischen Universität München) and Prof. Julien Cohen-Adad (Polytechnique Montréal, Québec): Artificial intelligence for an integrative approach to analyse the brain and spinal cord in multiple sclerosis
• Prof. Andreas Kist (University Hospital Erlangen) and Prof. Nicole Li-Jessen (McGill University, Québec): Airway, an AI-powered wearable device for airway health monitoring

Together with the Research Promotion Agency of Québec FRQ-Santé, WKS Bayern-Québec/Alberta/International supervised the call for proposals on behalf of the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts. Artificial intelligence in medicine has been a focus of scientific cooperation between Bavaria and Québec since 2019/2020.

Official Press Release from StMWK (only German)