The untold story of the youngest doctor to win the 2023 Golden Globe

Youngest Scientist Golden Globe Award 2023

In 2019, Dr. Pham Huy Hieu received a full doctoral scholarship from the French government to study at the University of Toulouse in Computer Science. His time studying in France was when he began his research on artificial intelligence applied in smart healthcare and digital healthcare.

After graduating with an excellent degree, Dr. Hieu returned to Vietnam to take on the position of research expert and head of the basic research group at the Big Data Research Institute (VinBigData). He is currently a lecturer at the Institute of Computer Science and Engineering, and Deputy Director of the Smart Health Research Center, VinUni University.

It is known that the choice to return home to contribute was decided by him before the time of studying abroad. He wanted to return to directly participate in scientific research activities in Vietnam, especially urgent and challenging issues such as technology and medicine.

Dr. Pham Huy Hieu, winner of the 2023 Golden Globe Award (Photo: NVCC).

When talking about the opportunity to study medical technology, he said that healthcare is the most important field because it is related to health, affecting the lives of everyone regardless of class.

In recent times, artificial intelligence and data science have developed to a very high level of perfection and opened up a series of applications in medicine. He chose medical technology because Vietnam is facing major challenges in public health care due to the shortage of doctors and the increasing demand for health care, and technology is the most potential solution to solve this problem.

With his great efforts and contributions to domestic science, Pham Huy Hieu is the youngest scientist to become the owner of the Golden Globe in 2023 at the age of 31.

Owner of many inventions and innovations of scientific and practical value

He is the owner of many inventions and innovations of high scientific and practical value, typically the solution "VinDr medical imaging diagnostic software based on artificial intelligence technology", the solution "VAIPE: Smart healthcare monitoring and support system for Vietnamese people", 50 scientific articles in prestigious international journals and conferences, the 2023 Golden Globe award and a series of other prestigious awards.

"Briefly, VinDr is artificial intelligence software capable of supporting real-time diagnosis, detecting lesions and diseases on medical images (X-ray, CT, MRI).

The software helps screen patients on a large scale, helping doctors diagnose faster and more accurately. The solution has been deployed in many hospitals across the country and is trusted by doctors," Mr. Hieu said about his research.

Dr. Pham Huy Hieu (far left) owns many scientific research works of high practical value (Photo: NVCC).

This solution provides a mobile platform that allows individuals to collect, manage, and analyze their health data. Medication habits, heart rate, blood pressure, height, weight, and other important health indicators such as ECG signals will be collected via smartphones and analyzed to provide recommendations on safe medication use, warnings about drug misuse, taking drugs outside of prescriptions, and early diagnosis of diseases.

He and his colleagues have completed the software's features and are working with partners to evaluate its effectiveness in practice. For the healthcare system in Vietnam, VAIPE is meaningful in that it helps people proactively manage their health through digitizing and analyzing personal medical data.

Having published 50 scientific articles, including 20 articles in Q1 journals, he does not think he has made any major discoveries for science. However, he believes that he and his colleagues have made certain meaningful contributions.

"The biggest contribution is the definition of new digital health problems in Vietnam, using Vietnamese data to solve public health challenges in Vietnam. Many of these problems are new even to the international scientific community," said Dr. Hieu.

Having received many prestigious awards such as the Golden Globe, The ISCN Excellence Awards and The DAAD Fellows, he is delighted that his research work has been recognized by the Central Youth Union, the Ministry of Science and Technology and international organizations.

"For me, the award is not the goal of the work, but it has great significance in reinforcing and affirming that what we are doing is important and meaningful," he shared.

Challenges in the journey to elevate Vietnam's digital healthcare

Dr. Pham Huy Hieu's research journey has encountered many difficulties (Photo: NVCC).

In addition, the challenges in the job also come from how to correctly identify research problems, gather a team of students with enough skills and passion, collect enough quality data and develop solutions that have real impact on the community.

This is a difficult problem and requires a lot of time and resources. The only way to overcome these difficulties is to have a clear understanding of the purpose and meaning of your work to maintain motivation and share it with colleagues and students.

His research work also requires a lot of time, perseverance and effort, which makes it difficult for him to balance life and work. Spending time on work means having to cut short time for family and other personal interests or plans. In return, he feels extremely lucky to have the support and sharing of his family.

Regarding plans and projects for the future in the field of medical research and technology, Dr. Pham Huy Hieu affirmed: "Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing at a very rapid pace, opening up huge potential for developing smart medical applications.

In the coming time, my colleagues and I will strive to combine medicine and engineering into an interdisciplinary science, helping doctors diagnose faster and more accurately with the support of artificial intelligence and data science, thereby helping people improve their health and quality of life."

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