Canada (Commonwealth Union)_ Doctors from Ontario assumes that health care will improve and it will be easier to detect patients’ health changes with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Recently, the Ontario Medical Association (OMG) held an online news conference to outline how AI technology has been introduced into some areas of health care and there will be bigger changes in the future.
Dr. Andrew Park, OMG President said that many Ontario doctors are already at the forefront of AI research and how to apply it to improve patient care and outcome.
“We’re looking to connect the power of AI to make predictions about which people or populations might get certain diseases, to anticipate which patients will have complications, and to improve our scarce health-care resources,” Park said.
According to him, one of the main points is that AI technology can quickly absorb many information to give physicians an accurate picture of the patient’s condition, recognizing patterns which doctors might oversee.
He added that along with improving patient outcomes, the technology can also lessen the burden on the health-care system by preventing diseases from progressing to more advanced stages.
Dr. Ibukun Abejirinde, a scientist at Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care, said that she is part of a health care team which uses AI to find out whether a person will develop Type-2 Diabetes, up to five years ahead of time. Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) funded this project.
She said that the development of AI in predicting the possibility of future disease has created issues which the health team is working on.
“The next problem has to do with, you know, there’s documented evidence of the potential and power of AI. There are also documented failures. How do we reduce the harm and escalate or leverage the good, and the benefits of artificial intelligence at a very large population level,” Abejirinde said.
According to her, another fear is on how to restructure Ontario’s health care system to be able to apply new knowledge in a way which provides earlier interventions to individuals who are most likely to develop disease such as Type-2 Diabetes.
She added, “If we have a responsible AI which can be deployed sustainably at scale, we’ll be able to make better health-care decisions which will help the people better.”
Another question which came up during the news conference was whether AI would gradually replace doctors. Park said he did not imagine that this would ever happen.
Park says that there’s always a fear around emerging technologies which we need to address.
He said that AI won’t be a substitute to doctors, but doctors who use AI will replace doctors who don’t use AI.
