Wes Hall and Patsy Anderson to accelerate SickKids Artificial Intelligence with landmark $3 million donation
Legendary philanthropists' $3 million gift will fuel responsible AI innovation inside the world’s leading paediatric hospital
In a major advancement for Canadian-led health innovation, two families have joined forces to support a $3 million gift towards supercharging artificial intelligence at SickKids under the SickKids Artificial Intelligence (SKAI) program. Prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist, Wes Hall and his wife, Christine Hall, and distinguished philanthropists, Patsy and Jamie Anderson, have invested in SKAI, an enterprise-wide program focused on deploying responsible AI across clinical care, research, education and operations. The Hall-Anderson donation will further elevate the cutting-edge AI research by the SKAI Service team by establishing the inaugural SickKids Artificial Intelligence Innovator in Child Health to be awarded to Dr. Devin Singh.
Photo Caption: Dr. Devin Singh, co-lead of SickKids’ SKAI Service, has been named the inaugural SickKids Artificial Intelligence Innovator in Child Health.
Dr. Singh is the co-lead of SickKids’ SKAI Service, a clinician-scientist in Artificial Intelligence and a staff physician in paediatric emergency medicine. The SKAI Service team provides the expertise and oversight needed to develop, assess, monitor and scale AI systems intended for deployment across the organization. As one of Canada’s foremost experts on the application of clinical AI in paediatrics, Dr. Singh co-leads a multidisciplinary team of data scientists, clinicians, and software engineers advancing ethical, human-centered machine learning. They are at the forefront of defining best practices for the responsible use of AI in health care, creating a blueprint for how the technology can be adopted safely and equitably by other health-care organizations.
“SickKids has world-class AI researchers and clinicians positioned to transform health care." - Wes Hall, ICD.D
“When we look at Canada’s future, our greatest competitive advantage lies in homegrown innovation,” says Wes Hall, SickKids Foundation Board Director, Founder and CEO of Kingsdale Advisors, Executive Chairman and Founder of WeShall Investments Inc., Chairman and Founder of the BlackNorth Initiative and Chancellor of the University of Toronto. “SickKids has world-class AI researchers and clinicians positioned to transform health care. We should be doing everything in our power to foster and keep their breakthrough undertakings here in Canada. Our gift to SKAI backs a visionary team helping to ensure Canadian innovation shapes the future of health care.”
Through SKAI, SickKids is advancing the responsible use of AI to advance precision child health, helping clinicians diagnose faster, treat smarter and predict better. Under the co-leadership of Dr. Singh and Dr. Anna Goldenberg, Varma Family Chair in Biomedical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence, the SKAI Service brings together clinicians, researchers and data scientists to develop and deploy AI solutions where they stand to make the greatest impact.
Building on early support for AI initiatives at SickKids from donors such as John and Melinda Thompson, the Hall-Anderson investment will accelerate the SKAI team’s ability to develop AI solutions to address complex operational and clinical challenges with industry-leading safety and ethical rigour. Through the SKAI Service, SickKids has established rigorous processes for the development, assessment, deployment and monitoring of AI systems, ensuring they meet the highest standards of fairness, transparency and trustworthiness.
“Equitable health care is central to who we are as Canadians and a responsibility we owe future generations,” says Patsy Anderson, C.M., former SickKids Foundation Board Chair and current Honourary Campaign Chair. “Advancing care and achieving medical breakthroughs requires investing in bold ideas and the people behind them. Dr. Singh and the SKAI team are creating new opportunities to ask bigger questions, accelerate discoveries and reshape what is possible in child health. Our family is proud to support these world-class innovators as they push the boundaries of paediatric medicine.” The Andersons are noted Canadian philanthropic leaders that have dedicated decades of support making transformational gifts to supporting SickKids.
As a global leader in paediatrics and named the world’s number one children’s hospital by Newsweek for the second consecutive year, SickKids is helping shape the future of responsible AI in health care, creating models and approaches that have the potential to influence care delivery beyond paediatric medicine in Canada and around the world.
“Artificial intelligence is actively reframing how we conceptualize and practice medicine,” says Dr. Devin Singh. “But to build leading AI programs you need world-class engineers working alongside frontline clinicians, to truly understand the areas of opportunity and potential implementation. This generous gift from the Hall-Anderson families helps SickKids bridge that gap, by providing the SKAI Service team with the runway to develop and scale machine learning algorithms safely from research validation to everyday clinical operations. Philanthropic support is one of the catalyzing forces behind SKAI and will help fuel our ability to recruit and retain the very best AI researchers, provide a platform to pursue new discoveries and allow us to train a new generation of AI leaders who will work hand-in-hand with clinicians and researchers to strive for improved patient outcomes.”
The Hall-Anderson donation builds further support for SKAI, which has received investments of $1 million or more from the following donors: Lewis Baker and Elaine Kehoe, Jordan and Lisa Gnat Family Foundation, iA Financial Group, Ihnatowycz Family Foundation, LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), McGraw Family Foundation, John and Melinda Thompson, Tech+Biz4SickKids, Amar Varma and Anna Perevezentseva, Henry Wolfond and Rochelle Reichert.
