What are the viewpoints of the researchers on artificial intelligence technology?
By Beza Teshome, Hassina Ousman, Sinaida Cherubin, and the Benshi.ai team
As part of the newly formed collaboration between the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) and benshi.ai, a brief survey was conducted among the EPHI researchers to assess the needs and capacity of the institution for implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine L (ML) solutions to the research activities.
Researchers from different departments were asked about their current research activities, their expectations for how ML can be used to achieve their research goals and the characteristics of the data they work with. The survey also assessed the ML and data science skills of the EPHI researchers.
Overall, EPHI researchers were optimistic that ML could help address the research needs of the EPHI. The respondents expressed wanting to use ML to improve public health research, specifically for selecting and targeting public health interventions. The result showed that the overall expectations for the implementation of ML in EPHI are to help improve the quality of the research activity that is currently being done.
However, while most researchers felt they have adequate skills in the fundamentals of computer science/statistics and data wrangling skills, almost all respondents expressed lacking in knowledge of ML concepts and experience in applying ML methods to data analysis.
Departments represented
The respondents of the survey represented the following four EPHI departments: Burden of disease, Environmental Health, Food Science and Nutrition Directorate, and the Health System and Reproductive Health Research Directorate. The highest response rate was from the Food Science and Nutrition Research Directorate.