The future of AI in medicine

From a friend who has worked at the NIH for many years:

“Can AI help doctors make better decisions? At NIH, we brought together scientists and clinicians from across the country to explore exactly that. Their consensus was that with continued research, ethical and responsible guardrails, and strong collaboration, AI could become a helpful and powerful tool for healthcare. Imagine tools that help doctors spot problems earlier, personalize treatments, and ease clinical workload, without replacing the human touch. Recommendations of the workshop participants included: 

 

* Build AI that is useful, safe, and protects privacy. 

* Improve health data systems so AI works better. 

* Make sure AI works for all communities.”

In radiology, AI has already made significant inroads in speed and accuracy of interpreting images. But recent research suggests some refinements need to be made:

““We find that different radiologists, indeed, react differently to AI assistance — some are helped while others are hurt by it,” said co-senior author Pranav Rajpurkar, assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

 

“What this means is that we should not look at radiologists as a uniform population and consider just the ‘average’ effect of AI on their performance,” he said. “To maximize benefits and minimize harm, we need to personalize assistive AI systems.”

 

“The findings underscore the importance of carefully calibrated implementation of AI into clinical practice, but they should in no way discourage the adoption of AI in radiologists’ offices and clinics, the researchers said. 

 

“Instead, the results should signal the need to better understand how humans and AI interact and to design carefully calibrated approaches that boost human performance rather than hurt it.”

My prognosis: these adaptations are not only feasible but will be achieved in the next few years. 

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/does-ai-help-or-hurt-human-radiologists-performance-depends-doctor

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