Welcome to my personal website. I'm a medical AI researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I teach courses on Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare. I studied medicine in the UK and completed a DPhil (PhD) on human-computer interaction of digital health technologies at the University of Oxford. I'm a Fellow of the British Computer Society and I have completed an Executive MBA at the University of Auckland. I am the Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Digital Health & AI and have published textbooks on digital health, medical statistics and AI.
Research
I'm currently conducting research on Human-Centred Design and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare:
Human-Centred Design
My DPhil Thesis at Oxford was on how we can use scientific "laws" of design to ensure that software used in healthcare can be carefully designed to keep patients safe while reducing the administrative burden on doctors and nurses. These laws are based on the limits of the human body and brain — how quickly can we move a mouse, how much can we read without overloading our working memory, and how do we make choices between options. These "laws" have been developed through carefully conducted scientific experiments and can be used to build more human-centred digital health systems.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is being rapidly adopted in healthcare. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled memorisation of large amounts of text within AI models. By retraining distilled LLMs to memorise medical data sets, novel, lightweight models can be created that have excellent performances on specific tasks such as AI scribing and following clinical guidelines.
Publications
Thesis
- Usability of Digital Health Technologies: supervised by Prof Mike English, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. Co-supervised by Prof Jim Warren, Prof Andre Kushniruk and Prof Elizabeth Warren.
Textbooks
- Textbook of Digital Health: an open-access textbook developed for my course "Introduction to Digital Health" at the University of Auckland.
- Textbook of Medical Statistics: an open-access textbook of medical statistics covering data types, probability, study design, hypothesis testing, regression, survival analysis, meta-analysis, and evidence-based medicine.
- Textbook of AI: an open-access textbook on artificial intelligence covering the mathematics, algorithms, architectures, and applications of modern AI from first principles.
- Textbook of Usability: an open-access textbook of usability — the science of designing things that people can actually use. From cognitive psychology through design heuristics to usability testing methods.
- Textbook of Medical AI: an open-access textbook on artificial intelligence in medicine covering the mathematics, evaluation methods, and clinical applications of AI for doctors and medical researchers.
- Textbook of Linux: an open-access textbook on Linux — its history, architecture, and use. From the kernel and shell to scripting, networking, and modern containerised systems.
Software Applications
- LIFE (Life-saving Instruction for Emergencies): smartphone and virtual reality simulator that teaches neonatal resuscitation and management of medical emergencies. Winner of "Saving Lives at Birth" and "VR for Impact" awards.
- Maths Gauntlet: smartphone and iPad app for high-school students learning mathematics.
Journal Articles
I have published more than 100 journal articles with over 4,000 citations. See my latest articles on Google Scholar.
Teaching
- DIGIHLTH 701: Introduction to Digital Health, University of Auckland
- DIGIHLTH 704: Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, University of Auckland
Supervision
Current PhD Students
- Asma Rababeh, University of Oxford
- Luqman Lawal, University of Oxford
- Indu Bala, University of Auckland
- Emma Collins, University of Otago
Previous PhD Students
- James O'Donovan DPhil, University of Oxford
- Tim Tuti DPhil, University of Oxford
- Christiane Hagel DPhil, University of Oxford
- Gulraj Grewal DPhil, University of Oxford
© Dr Chris Paton