Hi, this is Dr. Scott Morris with the November of 2024 column called Opportunities in Artificial Intelligence. With artificial intelligence being today's trending topic, and the simple fact that this AI and ICareE's newsletter has returned to your inbox, it's clear that there are plenty of opportunities surrounding the implementation of AI technologies. In ICare specifically, I've determined some of the potential opportunities from AI.
There are nine ways that AI will likely impact how we practice in the coming years. Number one, one of the early uses is that is already manifesting itself is the automation of many administrative tasks such as patient scheduling, billing, managing electronic health records, and freeing up health care professionals to spend more time focusing on patient care and less time on administrative tasks. Next, getting the most press right now is medical imaging interpretation. Making diagnostic images and using machine vision to more efficiently and effectively look for patterns that humans might miss will likely alter our entire clinical decision making.
Number three, AI can save millions by making diagnostic clinical decisions or at least augmenting providers and doing so. AI technologies that augment these providers' clinical decision making will help define exactly what diagnostic tests should be performed. Add to that eventually, determining what order in which to perform those tests and increasing the efficiency of diagnosis while also reducing unnecessary testing could save the health care system many millions of dollars per year. Coming in at number four, we have clinical decision support systems that are being developed and will take data from current patient monitoring systems such as your URA or your Apple Watch and give us all a better holistic view of our patient's health.
These are the same systems that may also suggest evidence-based medicine approaches that may not be in the provider's current treatment library. AI will also improve predictive and analytics, machine vision technologies and the ability to analyze huge data sets will enable AI to identify patterns in patient data and predict the onset of many chronic diseases at a much earlier stage, allowing for better outcomes to do more proactive intervention. These may also allow for predictive suggestions of what consumers like to purchase from a retail standpoint, which may have a much larger clinical impact on optical inventory and sales. Coming in at number six, as far-fetched as robotic surgery may seem, the already technologies allowing for robotic cataract surgery.
My co-editor Dr. Rihanna Ahmed has written in about how AI-driven surgical robots can assist in performing minimally invasive surgeries with high precision, reducing complications and recovery time, and at the same time improving surgical outcomes. Other groundbreaking AI technologies will allow for more rapid drug discovery and development by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify potential drug candidates and simulate biological processes, speeding up research and development, all while cutting costs. Number eight, a little further down the road, AI technologies will be able to comb through volumes of data sets, medical research, and specific individual characteristics, such as your genome, and compare that to under other individuals with similar genotypes, phenotypes, environmental conditions, and diagnostic outcomes, to develop truly personalized treatment plans instead of a more common, one-size-fits-all method utilized today.
Truly individualized precision medicine is coming. Now, last, we find to get to the really cool stuff such as virtual health assistance. Think of it as the healthcare version of Siri that will use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to handle routine questions and provide basic medical advice, thus reducing many of the current burdens for healthcare professionals. These opportunities offer a glimpse into the transformative potential of AI in making healthcare more efficient, accessible, and effective.
The journal AI and healthcare will cover all these technologies over the next few months to keep you updated on who the players are and the technologies that may impact how you see your patients. Hope you learned a little bit from this column and stay tuned for our December issue where we talk about the patient AI experience.