AI Briefing - Medicine

by Markus Egger | First published: November 27, 2023 - Last Updated: July 23, 2024

I recently did a presentation at one of the US' major medical institution. The presentation was one of our “Executive Briefings on AI” (for more information click here) but modified with an eye on uses in the medical industry (hospitals as well as research). I can't disclose everything that was said here, but I also recorded a more compact version of it, which I present to you here:

In this video, we dream about a world where a doctor in a hospital can walk into a patient's room to respond to an emergency. That doctor may have never seen that patient and be completely unaware of the patient's medical history. The doctor may also be unexperienced, or simply nervous. Nevertheless, AI helps to instantly understand all the factors, such as the important aspects of the current emergency (including information retrieved in real-time from medical equipment, such as vital signs and other information), the patient's medical history (but only the elements relevant for the current emergency), family medical history, allergies that may relate to the current emergency, and more.

This is not a dream. This is technical reality today!

In the video presentation, I show a simple example of AI helping medical professionals in diagnosing a medical emergency. It's a very simple example built for the purpose of this presentation, but it uses real AI to analyze all the known factors. The following is a screen shot of the example, with the patient's medical history shown on the left, current vital signs as well as a description of the emergency at the top/right, and the analysis of the AI being shown at the bottom/right corner:

One of the aspects of the example I really like is that even though the patient's medical history, as well as information about the current emergency, is only available in English, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capable of answering in any language. The following screen shot shows the diagnosis made in German (bottom/right display).

The overall presentation in this video goes into all kinds of aspects of AI as it currently applies to medical settings. It discusses current capabilities as well as current risks. The video aims to help decision makers in hospitals and similar settings.