This Young Innovator Is A Champion Of AI For Good

At the AIMed conference 2019, UCI's sophomore, and Dalai Lama Scholar Karishma Muthukumar gave an opening speech about her idea of using empathy-based artificial intelligence to improve human connection in the healthcare field. AIMed conference is an annual conference dedicated to bringing technologists, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and healthcare professionals to define AI-enabled solutions to create efficient, humane, and patient-centric solutions for the future of medicine. At the age of 14, while she was in high school, Karishma came up with the idea of using an emoji-based communication board for patients with Locked-in Syndrome. These patients are mentally aware but unable to move or verbally communicate. Her emoji-based communication board, OutLoud, won the abstract competition for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in the International Society of Pediatric Innovation's annual Pediatrics 2040 conference. In 2018, she was named the 2018 Young Innovators to Watch, a national scholarship program by Living in Digital Times and Lenovo.