Plenary Session 4 - From Insight to Impact: How AI is Reimagining Public Health Prevention
| Wednesday, September 17, 2025 |
| 3:30 PM - 4:20 PM |
| Grand Ballroom |
Details
AI has significant potential to transform public health prevention, but building trust, strengthening stewardship, and fostering a shared purpose around AI is essential. By treating data as core public health infrastructure, investing in people, and embedding equity and quality, we can unlock AI’s full potential to serve entire populations, not just systems. Join us for this plenary, where our keynote speakers will showcase how AI is being used in public health prevention by enhance cardiovascular prevention at a population level, before turning to the bigger challenge - transforming our AI data culture.
Speaker
Dr Stefan Buttigieg
Vice-President
EUPHA Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Section
Data Culture First: Unlocking AI’s Public Health Promise
Abstract
AI will not transform public health until we transform our data culture. The real bottleneck isn’t technology—it’s trust, stewardship, and shared purpose. This talk makes the case for a bold cultural shift: from seeing data as a byproduct to treating it as critical public health infrastructure. To responsibly scale AI, we need to reimagine how data is collected, governed, and valued across the health system. That means investing in people, building communities of practice, and embedding quality and equity into the DNA of every dataset. This isn’t just about fixing what’s broken—it’s about building something better, together. By aligning our data culture with our public health values, we can unlock the full potential of AI to serve populations, not just systems.
Biography
Dr Buttigieg is a Specialist in Public Health Medicine working in the Ministry for Health and Active Ageing in Malta. He is a Keynote Speaker with 50+ public speaking engagements track record and an avid content creator📱🎙️. He lectures at the University of Malta on the topics of Digital Health, Social Media in Healthcare and Digital Therapeutics. He is the Vice-President of the EUPHA Section on Digital Health.
Dr Buttigieg is on a mission to ensure sustainable, equitable & AI-enabled Digital Health for All.
Dr Zaidon Al-Falahi
University of Sydney, Campbelltown Hospital
Explainable Digital Biomarkers in Population Level Cardiovascular Prevention - Rationale for the Heart Watch Study
Abstract
Prevention has been a major driver of improving life expectancy worldwide, and “intelligence" is a modern biomarker for prevention. Machine learning algorithms can reveal subtle nonlinear patterns in complex, multimodal data sets that facilitate correlative, predictive, and even causal inferences with diagnostic and prognostic implications.
Not only have these algorithms improved by orders of magnitude over the years, but they can be embedded in ubiquitous technology that have the potential to deploy precision preventive medicine at population level across the social divide. However, these applications must be validated carefully.
The Heart Watch Study, which is currently in preparation phase to start recruitment in Australia, is an example of what could potentially be possible. The study is made possible by two innovations. The first is the ability to record a fully diagnostic, 12-lead ECG from a smartwatch and a smartphone Application only, and can be done from home. The second is the ability to process the resultant 12-lead smartwatch ECG with Advanced ECG analysis, which is an explainable machine learning based analysis, to find evidence of underlying cardiac disease. The study aims to recruit 30,000 Australians with no prior cardiac disease and assess outcomes at 2 years.
The study is the first of its kind globally, and the generated evidence can have major implications for equity and public health in Australia.
Not only have these algorithms improved by orders of magnitude over the years, but they can be embedded in ubiquitous technology that have the potential to deploy precision preventive medicine at population level across the social divide. However, these applications must be validated carefully.
The Heart Watch Study, which is currently in preparation phase to start recruitment in Australia, is an example of what could potentially be possible. The study is made possible by two innovations. The first is the ability to record a fully diagnostic, 12-lead ECG from a smartwatch and a smartphone Application only, and can be done from home. The second is the ability to process the resultant 12-lead smartwatch ECG with Advanced ECG analysis, which is an explainable machine learning based analysis, to find evidence of underlying cardiac disease. The study aims to recruit 30,000 Australians with no prior cardiac disease and assess outcomes at 2 years.
The study is the first of its kind globally, and the generated evidence can have major implications for equity and public health in Australia.
Biography
Consultant Cardiologist and founder of the Medical Intelligence, Innovation and Data Science (MINDS) Hub at Campbelltown Hospital.
PhD student at the University of Sydney - The Heart Watch Study, researching the feasibility of using Smartwatch 12-lead ECG for population self screening with Advanced ECG analysis.
Founding member of the international Medical Intelligence Society.
Keynote Speakers
Zaidon Al-Falahi
University of Sydney, Campbelltown Hospital
Stefan Buttigieg
Vice-President
EUPHA Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Section
Session Chair(s)
Kate McBride
A/Prof. Population Health
Western Sydney University
