Brock University has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) graduate course for students aiming to pursue careers in public health management.

Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Managerial Applications is the first course purposely designed for Canada’s first Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Public Health (MPH) concurrent degrees program, which is jointly offered by Brock University’s Goodman School of Business and the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences.

The new AI course was co-designed and is co-taught by an academic scholar and an industry practitioner. Dipanjan Chatterjee, Associate Professor of Information Systems, teaches artificial intelligence theory and research, while Adekunle Ajiboye, a celebrated and highly respected entrepreneur who founded and heads the technology firm AAJIMATICS, shares real-world experiences and insights as a hands-on technology executive.

“We live in an era where all forms of human interactions and engagement are increasingly digitized at the source, fuelling the data that artificial intelligence thrives on,” says Ajiboye.

The new course looks at the digitization and mass scale machine-based decision-making, where the requirement for information processing is large and the decision-making is time sensitive and requires accuracy and effectiveness.

Chatterjee says the COVID-19 pandemic offers a fitting example of how the course is relevant to today’s public health management decisions.

“Artificial intelligence can help optimize and prioritize the distribution of scarce resources, such as vaccines and medicine,” he explains. “Typical of such public health decision-making, the volume of information that AI-aided decision regimes can effectively handle and capitalize on is very, very large.”

Students of the MBA and MPH concurrent degrees program spend their first year of study taking MBA courses, such as accounting, organizational behaviour and financial management, and their second year taking MPH courses delivered exclusively online, such as infection control, epidemiology and biostatistics in public health. They also complete a mandatory 420-hour internship in a health-related field.

“The synergy and symbiosis between the MBA and MPH programs continue to unfold and strengthen in many respects for our concurrent degrees students,” says Tek Thongpapanl, Associate Dean for the Goodman School of Business.

“The addition of the artificial intelligence course to the MBA-MPH program will equip students with knowledge that has become critically important to their professional success and advancement,” he says.

Brent Faught, MPH Graduate Program Director, says the course will create meaningful opportunities for students.

“In the past year alone, health innovations have dramatically changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge gained from the artificial intelligence course will help our future health leaders understand and contribute to recent advances in big data sharing and analysis,” he says.

For more information on the ‘Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Managerial Applications’ course and the MBA-MPH concurrent degrees program, visit the Goodman School of Business website or email mba-mph@brocku.ca