The RHU Office of the President truly elevated our intellectual discourse by hosting the second online lecture in the Nazek Rafik Hariri Distinguished Lecture Series, featuring the esteemed Dr. Wissam Faour. As a pioneering faculty member and Professor of Pharmacology at the Lebanese American University, Dr. Faour embodies the spirit of innovation and the pursuit of knowledge.
Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Faour has taken on numerous pivotal roles, such as Pharmacology Discipline Coordinator and Director of Medical Year I, impacting the next generation of medical professionals. His leadership in the Biomedical Research Laboratory and the Inflammation Pharmacology Laboratory has positioned him at the forefront of scientific inquiry.
With an impressive H-index of 24 and over 1,559 citations, Dr. Faour is not only a remarkable researcher but a testament to the power of dedication and lifelong learning. The grants he has received, including those from the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and the Order of Chemists in Quebec, highlight his commitment and the respect he commands in the scientific community.
His presentation, "The Future of Pharmacology: in the Era of AI," ignited curiosity about the transformative role of artificial intelligence in pharmacology. He explored phases of drug development, drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical evaluation, and post-marketing studies, and the cost of developing drugs. He indicated that today's problem is not how to collect data but rather how to use and analyze the actual big data in hospitals, and how the vast realm of big data revolutionized the understanding of real-world data and evidence RWD and RWE compared to traditional clinical trials RCT.
He discussed the applications of RWD and RWE in Healthcare, such as improving decision-making for professionals with real-world patient data, managing population health trends, monitoring drug safety post-market, and analyzing health patterns in epidemiological studies. "Hospitals are a mine of data waiting for the gold miners," he said. "Utilizing RWD and RWE is a top strategic priority." RWD and RWE are unstructured and voluminous and require proper analysis to improve their usability for medical data science.