Artificial intelligence – The medical revolution is coming

It is a well-acknowledged fact that the burdens of health care are ever increasing. The development of medical advancements continues to increase the number of treatable conditions. However, something must change to allow clinicians to meet these new demands when also fulfilling their existing commitments. For this reason, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a tantalizing prospect, promising the automation of the mundane to allow clinicians to focus what they do best, treating patients. Hints of this incoming AI revolution are already becoming slowly apparent. No two patients are the same, and neither should their treatments. Patient data often contain an impossibly vast set of variables that are impractical to analyze for each patient. AI provides a prospect of true personalized medicine. Imagine a day where doctors are equipped with AI systems that can analyze vast sets of clinical parameters and scans in moments, distilling them down to digestible data that allow clinicians to make quick and effective decisions.1 Already, AI-powered algorithms are being tested to aid in spotting signs of cancer, heart disease, and other conditions in their earliest stages, often when they are most treatable. One study showed that AI was able to detect signs of lung cancer in patients comparably to experienced radiologists.2 Earlier interventions mean better outcomes and more lives saved. However, AI’s contributions do not stop at the patient’s bedside. In medical research, AI is accelerating the pace of discovery. Conventionally, drug discovery can be a painstaking process of sifting through hundreds of candidate compounds. Now, machine-learning models can sift through mountains of data, spotting patterns and connections that would take humans years to uncover. The result is vastly quicker, cheaper, and safer research, which translates into cheaper treatments and care.3 What once took decades of research could maybe be accomplished in just a fraction of the time. Finally, there is the mundane but essential work of administrative tasks. Anyone who’s been to a doctor’s office knows how much time is spent on paperwork, filling out forms, scheduling appointments, and writing clinic letters. AI is poised to change all of that by automating these repetitive tasks, with existing software such as Heidi Health©, automating the documentation of clinical consultations from simple unedited recordings. Of course, as with any new tools, there are limitations and challenges to overcome. AI models are only as good as the data that they are trained on, and this introduces a significant risk of bias. Training the models of predominantly western populations where the software is developed, means that outputs may not adequately represent certain groups of people. Ensuring that AI algorithms are fair, transparent, and continually monitored is crucial to avoiding unintended harm. Furthermore, while AI has immense potential to enhance the quality of care, it should never replace human expertise. The stakes in health care are often life or death. Therefore, AI can support healthcare providers, but it should never overshadow the irreplaceable value of human intuition and clinical decision-making.