University of Mannheim receives funding for research project on how AI can be used for medical decisions

While artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming many sectors including the medical, the University of Mannheim is researching how AI can be used to make comprehensible medical decisions and has received funding for the project.

Study in Germany: The University of Mannheim has received funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to research on how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to make comprehensible medical decisions.

The LAVA research project, led by Professor Dr. Heiko Paulheim, aims to create and improve knowledge graphs automatically through the use of AI. These graphs are essential aspects of AI and are described as a model that is used to search for and link information.

Paulheim has been working with the Karlsruhe-based company medicalvalues GmbH on an AI-based diabetes detection project since 2023, now, the computer scientist from the university collaborated with the company which specializes in AI solutions for medical diagnostics at hospitals and laboratories.

LAVA Project Details

LAVA stands for “solutions for the automated improvement and enrichment of knowledge graphs”. It is a joint project of the University of Mannheim and the medicalvalues GmbH and its goal is to create a certified medical product that will help doctors make precise and quick diagnoses. The plan is to compile multiple data for a rare disease including blood reports, X-ray images and other test reports with the help of a knowledge graph to make it easier for the medical practitioner to make any decision on the treatment.

“Our aim is to provide reusable, well-documented components for white-box AI. White-box AI refers to models that make it transparent how decisions are made – for example, by using knowledge graphs that are also understandable for humans. Users can therefore understand on which data a decision is based. This contrasts with black box models such as Chat GPT, where it is not possible to understand the answers," said Paulheim.

“AI is only trustworthy when humans can understand every decision and intervene in the event of wrong decisions,” Paulheim continues.

AI uses in the healthcare industry particularly increased during the Covid-19 pandemic when there was a lot of research being conducted on Covid-19 infection and also digital healthcare boomed due to social distancing norms. It was found that AI technology can assist medical practitioners in providing better healthcare by analyzing data like different reports.

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