Health care AI is already saving lives

The following op-ed was published by The Minnesota Star Tribune on September 20, 2024:

The outcome of the 2024 presidential election stands to have a lasting impact on American health care. Questions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its appropriate role in our society and economy are numerous and complex, and many of them remain unanswered.

As we grapple with AI's place on our roads, in our classrooms and alongside us in the workplace, there's one realm in which the careful, thoughtful development of artificial intelligence and machine learning is improving and saving lives today - and it's only getting started.

Artificial intelligence is already playing a role in our health care and may already be playing a role in saving your life or that of someone you love.

Far from replacing your doctors, AI can assist them and make their job easier. The technology's ability to consume and analyze millions of MRI scans, for example, and "learn" what a malignant tumor in your abdomen would look like, and then highlight it for your care team as they review the scans personally, is not only game-changing - it's lifesaving.

Or take a revolutionary new colonoscopy software that uses AI to detect potential polyps or cancers in real time, providing immediate assistance to doctors during the procedure. Colon cancer is the fourth most common cancer, and the deadliest one for men under 50. It is hard to overstate the impact this AI-driven software and technologies like it will have on the early detection of cancer and diseases of all kinds.

Or consider the countless hours of paperwork saved by an AI system that fills out the standard surgical report - in the operating room, in real time, as your surgical team discusses the procedure aloud. Reducing administrative burden creates more time for the team to spend working directly with you, and more time to see and treat other patients in need.

Throughout the patient journey, from better screening and earlier diagnosis to more personalized treatment plans and improved patient monitoring, AI can give your care team more time for you and more accuracy in their diagnoses and treatments, and can help provide better outcomes for patients.

At the same time, AI can help reduce health care system costs through more efficient and streamlined hospital operations. Such savings are increasingly important, especially as other cost drivers in our health system - and to you as a patient - are on the rise.

A final but critical point is that the bar for medical device authorization is high and devices are governed by a rigorous regulatory system with regulators actively engaged in applying that framework to artificial intelligence-enabled devices. The FDA has already authorized nearly 900 AI- and/or machine-learning-enabled medical device applications; new technologies are submitted every day with the goal of improving patient care.

And yet, we fully appreciate some of the unease surrounding AI's adoption, not only in health care but across our economy and society more broadly.

This initial reticence is all too common in the medical technology world.

Imagine, for example, the first patients suffering from heart disease to be told what they needed was a small, self-expanding mesh tube - what today we call a "stent" - surgically implanted in an artery to hold it open. No doubt many, if not all, reacted with skepticism, and possibly even abject fear. The idea may have even seemed ludicrous.

Fast-forward to today and it is a relatively easy, minimally invasive outpatient procedure so commonplace that it is almost taken for granted. The same can be said for countless groundbreaking procedures that were met initially with trepidation but that now are the standard of care.

Just as with the first stent implant, AI should of course be adopted with care and caution. But just as with stents, AI has the potential to grow into a remarkable everyday tool in the hands of skilled doctors and nurses who use it to improve and save patients' lives.

The medical technology community's vision is of a world where medical technology enables better outcomes for every patient, every time, everywhere. The digital revolution unfolding in front of us today, driven in no small part by artificial intelligence, will help us get there.

Pete Arduini is CEO of GE Healthcare, which has headquarters in Chicago. Scott Whitaker is president and CEO of AdvaMed, association representing the med-tech industry, with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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