Making AI Matter in Healthcare

Healthcare is just as prone to fall victim to hype and irrational exuberance as any other complex industry. And the more revolutionary the promise, the more outrageous the overstatements could be. Artificial intelligence has certainly been one of those "next big things" for some time in healthcare. Whether branded as "big data and analytics" or "automated clinical decision support," the results of technology-assisted care, especially in non-clinical and non-emergent settings, have been uneven at best. But a new report indicates AI's time in healthcare is nigh, and technology and policy pioneers are doing their best to ensure the hopes aren't all hype. The report, written by the JASON advisory group, was commissioned by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). RWJF senior program officer Michael Painter said the report might serve as a bellwether for AI deployment in medicine. "One of the points they're making is 'Yes, we've been talking about AI for decades and there's been a lot of hype that has evaporated,'" Painter said. "The initial sort of benchmark finding in this report is that this time is different; they're saying 'Pay attention, there are legitimate things that have happened in terms of deep learning, computer processing power, and data sufficiency.' We have moved to a point where there are significant implications for health and healthcare." One of the biggest potential payoffs of AI-enabled medicine, of cou...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Software Digital Health Source Type: news