September 2024 President’s Message

September 2024 President’s Message

AI is a valuable tool to enhance medical practices

by Howard Chang, MD —

Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are hired to play the big three classical music composers in a movie. Bruce shrugs and says, “I guess I’ll be Beethoven.” Stallone thinks for a moment and says, “Eh, I’ll be Mozart then.” All eyes turn to Arnold, who sighs heavily and mutters, “I’ll be Bach.”

That’s right; this month’s MSSC column is about “The Terminator” … I mean AI. Past MSSC President Maurice Duggins, MD, wrote about Artificial Intelligence last year in our MSSC newsletter. However, this soup du jour will likely be a permanent fixture on our CME menu for the rest of our careers. As a teaser to the upcoming Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine (KansasCOM) AI summit on Oct. 10, I’ve decided to revisit this burning topic.

First, we need to define “Artificial Intelligence.” Of course, who better to ask than ChatGPT itself: “Artificial Intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence by machines, particularly computer systems. AI enables machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, language understanding and decision-making.”

Your minds may go straight to Skynet from “The Terminator,” but notice ChatGPT didn’t mention anything about taking over the world … but it wouldn’t, would it?

Instead of being frightened by AI, I believe we must embrace it and surf this wave of change. Would you like more time to see patients, or see more patients per day? Would you like to get out on time? Want to improve your billing and documentation? Want to better predict your staffing and supply needs for the next three months? AI can leverage statistics and data to provide the information needed to augment our brains. Yes, we can figure this out ourselves, but AI can do it with the click of a mouse.

I’d argue that AI should be renamed “Augmented Intelligence.” AI is already being used to enhance our ability to care for patients more rapidly, efficiently and intelligently. In hospitals, radiology uses AI to smooth out CT images, helping us better identify embolisms. Pathology is using AI to count cells — imagine not having to sit under a microscope to count cells! There are also attempts by AI to help physicians interpret EKGs in cardiology.

In some emergency departments, physicians are using AI to assist in creating patient charts. Using a microphone-equipped device, AI listens to the patient-physician encounter and, with the click of a button, generates a chart with differential diagnoses and even predicted care plans. I’ve trialed this several times and am amazed at how far AI has come in medicine. I am also shocked at how terrible my standard documentation is in comparison, but this probably isn’t a surprise to my hospitalist colleagues.

Last month’s newsletter reported how the MSSC Board is asking all MSSC members to use the Coltrain app for HIPAA-compliant communication. Coltrain is working on leveraging AI to create summaries for physicians that can be added to cases. Coltrain also will use AI to suggest educational content that may be critical to the case based on discussions being had by the clinicians. For example, Coltrain may recognize early cardiogenic shock may be at play in a patient experiencing an acute MI with mild hypotension. Coltrain will recognize this and be able to insert clinical content relevant to cardiogenic shock into the case. It’s like having an Augmented Intelligence consultant on your case.

I do not believe that doctors will be replaced by AI during our careers. However, doctors who don’t use AI may one day be replaced by those who do. For instance, if three out of four doctors in my practice use AI for documentation and billing, and I’m the odd one out, I could have a problem. If I’m spending hours counting cells while my colleagues leverage AI, I definitely have a problem.

Of course, there are areas where AI still can’t help. For instance, when counseling a patient with a terminal diagnosis, you need a physician’s compassionate touch. AI also can’t physically examine a patient — it can’t listen to lung sounds, or visualize gait, pained facial expressions or body language. AI may not pick up on sarcasm, tears or eye rolls. When I trialed Sayvant, the AI scribing app, it couldn’t identify if my patient was old, young, male or female without me verbalizing it. At least for now, AI can’t replace the human touch needed to diagnose and heal.

AI, often misunderstood as a threat, is a tool to enhance our medical practice, from improving documentation and billing to aiding in diagnosis and treatment planning. None of us will be losing our jobs to AI anytime soon, but embracing AI will be crucial for the future of medicine. Thus, I hope each of you can attend the KansasCOM AI summit on Oct. 10. I plan to be there, because I know my brain needs all the augmenting it can get!