The evolution of medicine requires the ability to adapt.
From the President
Dr. Hruza served as Academy president from March 2019 to March 2020.
By George Hruza, MD, MBA, August 1, 2019
If you’re like me, you probably found Dermatology World’s July feature article that compared medicine today to medicine several decades ago very amusing. Back in the day we didn’t have to wrestle with electronic health records. We didn’t have to keep up with the latest cybersecurity concerns. We didn’t have to spend hours each day fulfilling administrative requirements. We didn’t have to worry about the role of augmented intelligence (AuI) in medicine and what it will do to patient care.
Indeed, we’ve been hearing more and more about convolutional neural networks that can classify images of skin lesions as benign lesions or malignant skin cancers, allegedly as well as board-certified dermatologists. Given this increased presence of AuI in medicine — and dermatology in particular — your Academy Board of Directors is addressing this issue head on and has adopted a position statement that addresses AuI and its role in medicine.
All told, the Academy supports AuI that can deliver high-quality patient care by enhancing the physician/patient relationship. In a nutshell, the Academy argues that artificial intelligence should provide an assistive role to in-person care and expertise. Combining machine learning technology with human intelligence can create a synergistic approach to quality care.
In the Academy’s position statement, we also provided a framework for future directions in the development of AuI that includes education, privacy issues, and advocacy. Essentially, it will be up to us to ensure that AuI is developed effectively and implemented ethically. To do so, we must remain engaged in its development and implementation.
AuI is really the crunching of big data. In the case of lesion identification, it is looking at many images to determine benign vs. malignant patterns. However, even more important is the “big data” collected through EHRs, claims, and pharmacies. The “paymasters” are starting to use AuI to sift through it to determine who provides cost-effective quality care. We need to have our own big data to counter their big data, which we are developing through DataDerm™. In the future, those who have the data will have the upper hand in controlling their destiny in the health care arena. I say it might as well be us.
As physicians, do we need to fear machine learning? I don’t think so. I know that AuI can be an uncomfortable concept, particularly in the medical world. However, as dermatologists we have done yeoman’s work adapting to the consistent changes we’ve faced within medicine over the years. We can adapt with regard to AuI by harnessing it and pointing it in the direction where we need to go. It’s up to us to make sure that the quality of health care only improves as medicine inevitably continues to evolve.
