{"id":175634,"date":"2026-08-20T14:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/175634\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T14:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:14:12","slug":"ottawa-surgeon-is-on-a-mission-to-build-safer-health-information-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/175634\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa surgeon is on a mission to build safer health-information AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

While many Canadians turn to AI for health-care advice, a survey found that slightly more than one quarter of respondents trust it to provide accurate information.GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Many patients have common questions about their reactions and recovery from dental surgery. To help clinics answer them, Dr. Hassan Moghadam, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon in Ottawa, co-founded an artificial intelligence (AI) platform called Lillian. <\/p>\n

He knew the most useful way to test it: \u201cI would try to make it fail.\u201d <\/p>\n

Dr. Moghadam had his team upload approximately 450 textbooks and 350,000 journal articles into an early version of Lillian. He then posed difficult clinical questions and watched for answers that were distorted or wrong.<\/p>\n

One result was particularly concerning: a company had published so extensively about a dental material that the AI interpreted the volume as evidence the product was sound. \u201cWe know [the product] is not great. If you just use AI, it looks at, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s 10,000 articles about this \u2013 it must be good,\u2019\u201d says Dr. Moghadam, a partner at the Argyle Associates clinic.<\/p>\n

The team changed how Lillian weighed its sources, screening for products backed by corporations, and favouring university-cited research. It also added material presented at conferences, to keep on the cutting-edge of new techniques.<\/p>\n

Large language models (LLMs) are designed to predict likely text, not to establish medical fact, cautions Matthew Guzdial, an associate professor who researches AI at the University of Alberta\u2019s Faculty of Science. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any notion of ground truth. In some respects, they\u2019re always hallucinating.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a recent survey by the Canadian Medical Association<\/a>, Canadians who followed health advice from AI were five times more likely to experience harm than those who did not. The survey also found that 69 per cent of Canadians had become skeptical of health information online, including material from sources they believed they should trust. Only 27 per cent trust AI to provide accurate information about health care or the health system.<\/p>\n

AI app developers can add filters and system instructions, asking the tool to cite where it\u2019s getting its sources. But even citations can be unreliable, says Mr. Guzdial, as a model may attach a made-up source. \u201cThere\u2019s no actual understanding here. It\u2019s just text in, text out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lillian\u2019s developers are also applying AI to analyze rejected dental insurance claims, identify submission problems and resubmit claims with revised information. <\/p>\n

The project is not Dr. Moghadam\u2019s first effort to build dental and medical technology. Earlier attempts included using AI to improve optical imaging and capture detailed images of tissue, and creating a \u201cGPS\u201d for surgery to help doctors navigate to exact locations inside the body.<\/p>\n

Dr. Moghadam was unable to secure funding for those projects, \u201cbut the key here was pivot, pivot, pivot.\u201d<\/p>\n

His experimentation with AI extends beyond health care. Nine months ago he opened the Sofia Vintage Motor Caf\u00e9 in Ottawa. From winter to summer, sales plummeted by 30 per cent and Dr. Moghadam was eager to diagnose why. <\/p>\n

He hired a Carleton University business student to analyze the situation and to feed sales data into ChatGPT. They realized that while customer traffic had held steady, sandwich sales had fallen, most likely because another sandwich shop had opened nearby.<\/p>\n

In response, Dr. Moghadam cut sandwich prices by $1, changed the bread, introduced a sandwich-and-drink deal, and moved prepared sandwiches to the counter \u201cso people are buying with their eyes,\u201d he says. All were sales tactics suggested by AI.<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9 still hasn\u2019t turned a profit, but it has become a community hub, raising tens of thousands of dollars for local hospices.<\/p>\n

As Lillian remains in development, Dr. Moghadam remains convinced that AI will have a positive impact. Still, human intervention is critical. While a patient might ask the AI whether bleeding is normal in a certain instance, and receive initial medical guidance, the user can always opt to speak to a doctor by activating a button on the interface.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that\u2019s very creative still requires a human mind,\u201d Dr. Moghadam says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: While many Canadians turn to AI for health-care advice, a survey found that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[7084,1660,55748,136,55751,55747,484,50846,61,55750,55749],"class_list":["post-175634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-adveditorial","tag-ai","tag-aitrust","tag-appwebview","tag-healthinformation","tag-medicalai","tag-noastack","tag-ordid4037111718","tag-ottawa","tag-patientcare","tag-patientsafety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}