AI in medicine: The spectrum of challenges from managed care
to molecular medicine
Russ Altman
Stanford University School of Medicin
Abstract
AI has embraced medical applications from its inception, and some of the
earliest work in successful application of AI technology occurred in
medical contexts. Medicine in the twenty first century will be very
different than Medicine in the late twentieth century. First, the
financing of medical care is changing dramatically, and there are acute
needs for access to medical data, and algorithms for extracting useful
knowledge from it. Second, the revolution in molecular biology is
providing a wealth of information about the basic molecular elements of
disease. The torrent of data being produced has already changed the way
medical research is conducted, and will soon fundamentally change the way
medicine is practiced. I will review the ways in which AI has
traditionally interacted with medicine, and outline a vision for how this
interaction will evolve under the new pressures. Fortunately, the
technical challenges to AI that emerge are very similar, and the prospects
for success are high.
Eyal Amir
Last modified: Wed Sep 9 10:40:13 PDT 1998