June 21, 2026
University of Hawaiʻi AI data center aims to improve healthcare
More than $12 million in federal funding has spurred researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center and the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) to convert a garage-sized, air-conditioned, ground-floor room at the Cancer Center in Kakaʻako into Hawaiʻi’s first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence data center.
Funding from the National Institutes of Health is intended to build a more sophisticated database of the many ethnicities in Hawaiʻi and around the Pacific region over the next five years, to better detect and analyze patients’ medical issues such as cancer. Work is already under way to renovate and outfit the new AI data center by the end of the year.
The facility will accelerate the AI-driven research coming out of the new Pacific Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Medicine (PAC-AID), said co-principal investigator John A. Shepherd, PhD, the UH Cancer Center’s chief scientific officer.
“Hawaiʻi is going to lead in this space”
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz pushed for the funding and called the project “very good news for Hawaii and the Cancer Center and School of Medicine” that will better assist physicians, healthcare workers and researchers across the Pacific region.
“There is not a comparable research institution in the Pacific,” Schatz said. “The quality of the research and the sophistication of the research and the size of the grant means that Hawaii is going to lead in this space for years.”
The federal investment of more than $12 million over five years means “Hawaii remains very competitive and it’s still pulling down its fair share of federal resources,” he said, adding that the new data center has the potential to generate an additional $50 million to $100 million in research funding. One of the goals of the Cancer Center, which opened in 2013, was “to position the University of Hawaii as a leader in this kind of research and it’s really coming true,” Schatz said.
Why representative data matters
Existing AI databases already allow healthcare workers to photograph suspicious moles for AI analysis instead of removing them for a potentially unnecessary biopsy. But existing AI data doesn’t account for the differences among the various ethnic backgrounds found in Hawaiʻi and around the Pacific — including differences among Asian populations, Shepherd said.
More detailed data on variances between Filipino, Korean, Japanese and Chinese patients, for example, could provide better information for diagnosing and treating patients too often grouped under the single umbrella term “Asian” — helping to more thoroughly analyze conditions including skin cancer. Data gathered by UH researchers could then be accessed by healthcare workers on the mainland and across the Pacific to help them better distinguish between individual ethnic groups as well.
A focused, local data center
The federal funds include $300,000 to convert the Cancer Center’s garage-sized room and equip it with high-speed equipment. The center is expected to employ about 26 people, primarily with backgrounds in computer science and computer programming, and its workforce demands could entice ex-pats on the mainland to return for highly skilled AI jobs.
Youping Deng, PhD, a JABSOM cancer researcher and PAC-AID co-director representing the medical school, said the data center “will help us to diagnose our local people and also find solutions to predict treatment response for patient management.”
Schatz emphasized that UH’s facility will be modest in scale, avoiding the energy and water demands that have drawn resentment toward warehouse-sized mainland data centers. “AI has enormous potential in the healthcare space,” he said, while noting “very significant risks in terms of fraud and theft, in terms of cybersecurity, in terms of energy and water use and in terms of what happens to employment.”
Shepherd likened the rise of AI to a tsunami approaching Hawaiʻi: “We can either choose to ignore it and have it impact us in a random way, or we can choose how we’re going to meet it so that it serves us.” Should Hawaiʻi one day need a larger facility, he added, the islands have the resources to power it sustainably — “We’ve got plenty of sun, we’ve got plenty of chill water in the ocean. We’ve got the volcano for power. We’ve got wind.”
Adapted from “University of Hawaii AI data center aims to improve healthcare” by Dan Nakaso, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, June 21, 2026.