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