Pitt will host health and tech visionaries for a global forum in October

The University of Pittsburgh announced plans today to host a premier, three-day global forum Oct. 19-21, bringing together visionary leaders and experts to explore the future of health sciences with an eye toward artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. 

Forging the Future: The Intersection of Health, AI and Tech, an invitation-only event, will offer unique opportunities to engage with global industry and innovators, explore transformative ideas, and witness firsthand how Pittsburgh and the University are leaders in the, more than ever, overlapping fields of health, AI and innovation.

The three-day forum will feature two signature events, held together for the first time in one location: Oct. 19-20, the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils’ (GFCC) annual Global Innovation Summit will bring together global leaders from industry, academia, government and labor to exchange insights on competitiveness, resilience and transformative innovation strategies. Then, Oct. 20-21, the Council on Competitiveness (CoC) will host its Competitiveness Conversations series, focusing on strengthening place-based innovation, capacity building and unlocking economic leadership in regional ecosystems like Pittsburgh.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to engage in curated roundtables, interactive demonstrations and site visits to area research and innovation hubs. Working sessions will focus on real-world pathways in AI policy, health equity and tech translation.

“This year’s global forum will shine a spotlight on groundbreaking innovations — from BioForge and AI-powered diagnostics to next-generation clinical training tools and assistive technologies — while showcasing Pittsburgh’s unique innovation ecosystem, fueled by top-tier research institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, one of the nation’s top 20 most innovative universities,” said Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel, who serves as CoC’s academic vice-chair and is a member of the GFCC.

Gabel emphasized that Pittsburgh is uniquely positioned to host a global forum, not only because of its strengths and strong sense of place, but because of the active partnerships already driving innovation across the region. “What sets Pittsburgh apart is the density of collaboration — across research, industry and health care — that’s already happening here,” she said.

Among those innovative efforts are:

• A gift of computer hardware and support services from Dell USA that will help the Innovation Hub for Health Science Medical Research — a collaboration of Pitt, UPMC, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Carnegie Mellon University — fight a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and common diseases.
• Pitt’s partnership with NVIDIA and CMU to create an inaugural AI Tech Community, aimed at fusing medical expertise with cutting-edge AI tools.
• The launch of the Vijayalakshmi Innovation Center in Women’s Health Analytics and Research (VIHAR), a global initiative leveraging AI to address disparities in women’s health.
• A partnership with Amazon Web Services called the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences and Sports Analytics Cloud Innovation Center, which will revolutionize health sciences and sports analytics through cutting-edge data, machine learning and AI technologies.
• An additional partnership between the University and Vizzhy Inc., — the same corporate partner behind the VIHAR initiative — which will result in the creation of a transformative health care platform that will leverage the world’s most powerful AI to dramatically affect health and health care delivery.  
• A $10 million gift from Leidos to accelerate AI-powered cancer detection in collaboration with Pitt’s Computational Pathology and AI Center of Excellence.
• The Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance leverages Pitt’s medical research capabilities, CMU’s expertise in machine learning and AI, and UPMC’s clinical data to create new technologies and services in digital health. 

“We have the infrastructure, the expertise and — critically — a culture of innovation rooted in partnership,” Gabel said. “That makes Pittsburgh not just a place to talk about the future, but to build it together.”

“Pittsburgh — the birthplace of U.S. industrial might in the 20th century — continues to reinvent itself. Through a combination of imagination, insight, ingenuity, invention and impact, Pittsburgh finds itself today as a renewed, key innovation driver for the state, the nation and the world,” said Deborah L. Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the CoC and founder and CEO of the GFCC. “In particular, the convergence of health sciences and AI in Pittsburgh is helping to remake the city as ‘the place’ developing and deploying many of the most critical innovations for our nation and the world.”