Artificial intelligence is often touted as potentially destroying our livelihoods if not our lives, but in actual practice, it could help you live longer.
AI is moving into the medical specialties.
Dr. Elmer Bernstam is a professor with UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics and McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and is charged with teaching the doctors of tomorrow today, many of whom may be applying AI in their practices as its potential is developed.
“I think it’s pretty clear that these kinds of tools will have a significant impact on the practice of medicine and this impact is a little hard to predict right now. How will it change radiology, for example?” he asks. Radiologists examine data points and that’s something computers can be taught to do. Will specialists be replaced or will their practice be enhanced to be made more effective?
How AI will impact medicine is still anyone’s guess, and investors are guessing their $6.6 billion outlay by 2021 for development will pay off handsomely. Dr. Bernstam says its benefits are already being seen in the field of dermatology. “I think we’re in the early days, and we’ve discovered the ability to do certain things that we haven’t been able to do before, such as analyze images for dermatology and analyze certain skin diseases.”
Internal Medicine is just one discipline that could be revolutionized, as could cardiology. MIT is developing a capability to estimate the risk of death by heart disease at their artificial intelligence laboratory.