Listen to an audio version of Dr. Morris’ column here:
Welcome to AI in Eye Care, a new Jobson e-newsletter co-edited by me and Dr. Rehan Ahmed, MD. This monthly e-newsletter will bring you fascinating and educational features focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other related technologies in eye care specifically and health care in general.
We will interview leaders in the AI revolution and post frequent news flashes about noteworthy advances in AI. Our product spotlights will inform you about new tools being released and how they will make your job easier.
AI in Eye Care will have something for every eye care professional because we are developing the content from the perspective of all three Os – ophthalmology, optometry, and opticianry – to share this knowledge with everyone.
Very soon, AI tools will impact everyone and change health care delivery and the health care systems as we know it. If developed and used ethically and responsibly, AI will potentially rid our ailing health care system from biases, politics, and different agendas. Human providers, augmented with AI, will be better able to focus on improving the care we all provide while advancing the knowledge for future generations of caregivers, which ultimately will improve the quality of life for everyone.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
AI is a transformative technology that has rapidly advanced in recent decades, revolutionizing various fields, including everything from health care and finance to transportation and entertainment. At its core, AI refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes learning from experience, recognizing patterns, understanding natural language, and even making decisions.
In the field of health care, when we team artificial intelligence with human intelligence, it becomes what the American Medical Association calls Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (AIM). Though the concepts of AI and AIM are relative newcomers to the health care discussion, they are poised to be the most revolutionary change that medicine or society has seen. Some are even predicting that this will be the most powerful part of the fourth industrial revolution.
AI Is a Series of Knowledge Tools
AI is not just one technology, though. It is an umbrella term that includes multiple concepts and technologies used individually and in combination to augment human intelligence. Simply put, AI is a series of knowledge tools that allow humans to do what they currently do better and faster.
These various tools, when teamed with human creativity, experience, and empathy, will create new approaches to overcome the age-old challenges of improving access, quality, transparency, convenience, human connection, and effectiveness, while simultaneously lowering costs and ultimately restoring power to clinicians and consumers alike.
Like any new technology, there will be many challenges to overcome, including inherent biases in the data we used to train our early systems, as well as all the typical implementation challenges inherent with any new technology.
In AI in Eye Care, we hope to give you insights into both the good and the bad, as well as tips and tools of how to prepare and embrace this technological revolution. But instead of seeing these new AI tools as competitive or adversarial, we challenge you to embrace them in the interest of health care.
A.I. Will Completely Transform Health Care
AI and AIM will improve the health care experience across all touchpoints and channels in ways that no preceding technology has ever had the capability to do. There is little doubt that AI will affect all parts of humanity, and possibly the greatest impact will be on the health care industry.
As a clinician, health executive, or consumer, it is not necessary to know all the intricacies of how AI works, though such knowledge never hurts. (For those engineer types, check out Dr. Masoud Nafey’s feature on how AI works). Most of us do not totally understand how the light switch works, but we still flip the switch on and we have light. In AI in Eye Care, we hope to give readers with varying levels of interest in “how it works” the knowledge you need to understand what capabilities exist, how they will make your job easier, how they can help you overcome your challenges and how to put them to work in service of your missions and goals.
The inefficient and ineffective ways of how we provide clinical care, how we educate both patients and doctors, how we run our businesses, and how our customers interact with us are changing. My only real question is: Will you capitalize on the power of technology and adapt and adopt . . . or resist, reject, and regret?
We look forward to you joining us on this journey.
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