Class‐Rheum for AI: Reflections from a Filipino Rheumatologist and Health Informatics graduate student

Abstract

In 2019, when I returned to the university for my master's studies in Health Informatics, we had no subject particular to artificial intelligence (AI). A pandemic and a few theses proposal delays later, we're learning about AI more voraciously than ever: studying the literature, listening to online podcasts, organizing lectures, and coffee meeting groups with the Department of Computer Science. I am grateful to receive knowledge from my more experienced international colleagues, in the meantime 1,2 but as a graduate student, I am still an explorer. An explorer, since I am only the third Filipino Rheumatologist in Health Informatics, caught amid a country undergoing a socio-technical transition. 3 Despite the challenges of this transition such as partial implementation and selective participation of stakeholders, many of my colleagues in Health Informatics are frontline, leaders, and drivers of this change. But before AI can even take place, the Philippines must digitize its healthcare services as part of the plan to provide universal healthcare. 4 My institution began plans for digitization only