Department of Computer Science Seminar: Plamen Petrov

Plamen Petrov

November 21

12:45–1:45 p.m.

Stuart Building, Room 111

“AI-enabled Digital-First Healthcare Delivery–Latest Developments and Research Opportunities”

We have become accustomed to using digital-first technology powered by AI in our daily lives–from online shopping and getting personalized recommendations for retail, to travel, banking, transportation, etc. Healthcare has been late to adopt the trend, but its time has come. All healthcare players–traditional (hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies) and new entrants (Amazon, Google, Walgreens, etc.)–are aggressively developing capabilities that will transform the healthcare experience, bringing in virtual healthcare consultations, insight generation and prediction from text-based physician notes, intelligent clinical advisors from secondary research such as PubMed, non-intrusive diagnostic and sensing technologies, continuous healthcare monitoring from streaming data, and clinical information systems from medical images and videos, etc. The list of capabilities is long and growing rapidly, as research and development in the healthcare space is in full swing.

In this talk, Plamen Petrov will provide an overview of the digital healthcare domain and discuss current technology and research trends in the digital healthcare space, surveying advanced capabilities that were brought to market over the last year or so, and then focusing on ongoing research in the space and future research opportunities. The talk will bridge technical and business topics–connecting research activities in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science with innovation and business disruption in the $3.5 trillion healthcare industry.

Some relevant business news briefs:

Plamen Petrov is Vice President, Artificial Intelligence and Exponential Technologies and Chief Data Officer at Anthem Inc. Anthem is a leading health benefits company dedicated to improving lives and communities, and making healthcare simpler. Through its affiliated companies, Anthem serves more than 74 million people, including nearly 40 million within its family of health plans. Plamen is working on bringing digital-first, AI-enabled products and solutions to Anthem’s customers. The suite of digitally powered products and services provide superior user experience to Anthem’s members to access health care services with personalized convenience, high quality, and cost efficiency. The unique partnership between advanced AI technology and passionate credentialed clinicians empowered by knowledge bases and Machine Learning provides unique and personalized access to quality healthcare services. As Chief Data Officer, Plamen is responsible for guiding Anthem across all business areas on the ethical and responsible acquisition, protection, and usage of data as a strategic asset.

Plamen is a recognized expert applying Artificial Intelligence technologies to various business domains and in particular on probabilistic reasoning and inference, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning. Plamen has extensive experience in industry and academia, having worked in different roles at companies such as KPMG, IBM, Deloitte LLP, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, United Airlines, Sun Microsystems, Motorola, Convergys. Plamen holds a Master of Engineering Management degree from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Illinois. His undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is from Technical University of Sofia (TUS). Plamen serves on the faculty of the University of Illinois and Northwestern University where he conducts research and teaches graduate courses on Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Analytics. Plamen is currently the Industry Liaison Officer for the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGAI).