Dr. Stephen Lee, an associate professor, infectious disease and internal medicine physician, and member of the College of Medicine’s artificial intelligence (AI) education committee is exploring how AI could fundamentally change health care.

Giving Day 2025: Supporting research that could revolutionize the future of medicine

On September 10, the University of Saskatchewan (USask) community will come together in support of Giving Day, an annual 24-hour fundraising initiative. Among the researchers that could benefit from donor support that day is Dr. Stephen Lee, an associate professor, infectious disease and internal medicine physician, and member of the College of Medicine’s artificial intelligence (AI) education committee, who is exploring how AI could fundamentally change health care.

By Sarah Trefiak

As a researcher, Dr. Lee is looking at how AI, machine learning and deep learning can be applied to healthcare in ways that go far beyond diagnosis.

“AI has the potential to unlock scientific discovery, much like the industrial revolution did for industry,” he said. “It’s difficult to say exactly what the future will bring, but I think AI has the promise to be the solution to health care problems in Saskatchewan. There’s no limit to what medicine can become.”

He explained that AI research could fundamentally unlock scientific discovery in medicine, allowing scientists and medical practitioners to vastly expand societies’ understanding of medicine. This would lead to new ways to understand disease, new treatments, and also new ways of improving health.

One of the areas Dr. Lee is focusing on machine learning, or deep learning, where AI systems learn from simulated environments to develop knowledge beyond the information that has been provided by humans or existing information. While it’s not yet safe to deploy AI machines into a patient or medical setting, Dr. Lee is exploring simulations that would allow health researchers to safely enhance or “teach” AI models. 

“AI is an emerging field, and all of the big players are private companies,” said Lee. “That’s why it’s so important that researchers and academia have a voice in all of this. We are responsible as a society, especially in the medical profession, to advocate for AI to be beneficial to humanity as a whole.”

Donor support, like that provided through Giving Day, has played a key role in Dr. Lee’s own journey. Early in his undergraduate career, donor-funded research opportunities allowed him to gain hands-on experience in labs and inspire him to pursue a career in medicine.

Today, Dr. Lee said donor support towards his research could allow him to hire research staff including students, who would be given the opportunity to learn about the emerging field of AI as it relates to healthcare and prepare them to become leaders of the future.

“Research into this field has the potential to impact patient lives beyond what we can currently imagine—and what better day to dream big than Giving Day?”