Integrating artificial intelligence in bedside care for covid-19 and future pandemics

Integrating artificial intelligence in bedside care for covid-19 and future pandemics Michael Yu and colleagues examine the challenges in developing AI tools for use at point of care T he covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for both clinicians and healthcare institutions. Adapting to a rapidly emerging disease while facing staff and material shortages prompted difficult decisions on how best to allocate resources. Artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly moved to the forefront of the effort to adapt our healthcare systems to coping with covid-19. Hundreds of new models were developed, promising best solutions for all aspects of patient care from diagnostics to therapeutics and logistics. Yet only a small minority of these models were deployed, and none became widely adopted. 1 2 We argue that the covid-19 pandemic exposed flaws in the technological, institutional, and ethical foundations upon which AI must build to considerably improve bedside care. If AI is to be part of a rapid response to future health crises, the challenges that it faced during the covid-19 pandemic must be carefully analysed and overcome.