Artificial intelligence and its incorporation in the healthcare field will enable to perhaps avoid errors, improve the workflow, improve decision making and facilitate optimal treatment and care plans.
We are currently faced with extremely huge amounts of data piling up and being added on a daily basis. Every year, approximately sextillion bytes of data are added. These include whole-genome sequencing, high-resolution imaging, population-level data, scientific literature data, and data from wearables.
Artificial intelligence is defined as the ability of machines to think, learn and act like humans via a myriad of technologies. This includes machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning. Artificial intelligence is already being applied in almost everyday life applications. These include navigation applications such as google maps, and Waze, ridesharing applications, and commercial flight autopilot systems, and much more.
To date, there have been four large industrial revolutions over the years (Figure 1). We are now at the 4th revolution, introducing new technologies, with the internet, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud systems, and cyber-physical systems.
Figure 1 – The four industrial revolutions:
In medicine, there are plenty of avenues where artificial intelligence can be implemented and provide significant improvement. This includes in the fields of radiology and diagnostics, pathology, risk calculators, drug data and more (Table 1).
Table 1 – Clinical application of artificial intelligence in the medical field:
Concluding his talk, Dr. Palpattu conveyed his thoughts for the near future regarding artificial intelligence. The era of artificial intelligence and big data is here and we as physicians should embrace it. The electronic medical records of tomorrow will be dynamic and facilitate patient flow/care. However, despite is immense advantages and abilities to improve care, one must remember that artificial intelligence, no matter what form it takes, will not be able to provide compassion or empathy. That is why the human factor will always remain critical.
Presented by: Ganesh S. Palpattu, MD, FACS, George F. and Sandy G. Valassis Professor and Chair of Urology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Written by: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urology Department, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, USA, Twitter: @GoldbergHanan at the 39th Congress of the Société Internationale d'Urologie, SIU 2019, #SIUWorld #SIU2019, October 17-20, 2019, Athens, Greece