Medical AI

Healthcare is moving beyond digitalization toward a future powered by data and artificial intelligence. The Innovation Focus Medical AI supports this transformation at University Hospital Basel, with the goal of making medical information more actionable, improving diagnostic accuracy, and providing targeted support to healthcare professionals in their daily clinical practice.

The focus is on the meaningful integration of artificial intelligence into clinical care to enhance diagnostics, support treatment decisions, and reduce the administrative burden on healthcare professionals. In doing so, the initiative aims to strengthen quality, efficiency, and patient-centered care in a sustainable manner.

Today, a large proportion of medical information is already available in digital form. However, these data are often stored across different systems and can only be combined with considerable effort in routine clinical practice.

At the same time, both the volume of medical data and the complexity of clinical decision-making continue to increase, while healthcare systems face growing resource constraints. As a result, it becomes increasingly challenging for healthcare professionals to consider all relevant information comprehensively and in a timely manner.

This is where the Innovation Focus Medical AI creates value.

The Innovation Focus builds upon the long-standing collaboration between clinical practice, research, and technology at University Hospital Basel.

On this foundation, the initiative develops and integrates AI applications across the entire patient journey—from diagnostics to clinical decision support and outcome monitoring.

The patient remains at the center of all activities. The Innovation Focus follows a Human-Centered AI approach, ensuring that AI systems support healthcare professionals, simplify their work, and improve the quality of care.

Transparency, explainability, data protection, clinical safety, and human accountability form the core principles guiding all activities.

The Innovation Focus is built around three closely interconnected pillars:

• Building the technological foundation
  A modern data and IT infrastructure ensures that medical information can be collected, managed, and utilized securely, consistently, and in a format suitable for AI applications.
• Integrating AI into medical care
  New AI applications are deployed directly at the point of care, where they create tangible benefits for patients and healthcare professionals – for example in diagnostics, treatment planning, clinical decision-making, and routine workflows.
• Embedding innovation sustainably
  Through close collaboration with academic institutions, research organizations, and industry partners, solutions are developed that can be continuously refined and successfully translated into clinical practice.

A central objective of the Innovation Focus is the direct integration of AI applications into existing clinical workflows.

The emphasis is not on isolated research projects but on generating measurable value for patients and healthcare professionals. AI is viewed as a supportive tool that reduces the burden of data analysis, documentation, and information management while enabling more informed clinical decisions. Responsibility for patient care remains with the treating clinical team at all times.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to support many areas of healthcare. A particular focus of the Innovation Focus lies in cancer care.

Information from medical imaging, pathology, molecular diagnostics, and clinical data can be integrated automatically through AI and prepared in a structured manner for multidisciplinary tumor boards and other clinical decision-making processes. AI applications are being developed and implemented in areas including radiology, digital pathology, clinical documentation, surgery, and inpatient care.

The Innovation Focus aims to support faster and more accurate diagnoses, improve treatment decisions, and advance the development of personalized medicine.

At the same time, administrative processes can be streamlined and healthcare professionals relieved of non-clinical tasks, allowing more time for direct patient care.

In the long term, the initiative seeks to strengthen the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare delivery while positioning University Hospital Basel as a leading center for Medical AI and data-driven medicine.

The Innovation Focus represents an important step toward the AI-enabled university hospital of the future.

Experts from medicine, research, information technology, and data science work closely together to develop, validate, and implement innovative solutions under real-world clinical conditions.

By closely linking research and patient care, new technologies can be translated more rapidly into clinical practice. At the same time, this creates a scalable foundation for future innovations in data-driven medicine.

Protecting patient data is a top priority.

Health data are processed in accordance with applicable data protection regulations and are used exclusively for defined clinical and scientific purposes.

Artificial intelligence serves as a supportive tool for analyzing complex datasets and preparing relevant information for clinical decision-making. Responsibility for all medical decisions remains with qualified healthcare professionals at all times.

AI solutions are developed through close collaboration between clinicians, researchers, data scientists, and external partners. All systems are subject to rigorous standards regarding data protection, transparency, safety, and clinical validation before implementation.