by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | February 04, 2019
From the January/February 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
What AI is and what it ain’t
More and more, an industry consensus has emerged that AI will not replace radiologists anytime in the near future. So what does it mean for the practice itself?
The University of Utah Health System’s Higgins scoffed as he spoke about people who refer to themselves as “futurists”, who predict that there are going to be no more radiologists in the next few years. He believes that AI systems are going to be assisting radiologists and changing what they do, but that they stand no chance of replacing radiologists anytime soon.
“In reality, what I do as a radiologist is way more complicated than what people are doing with these algorithms right now,” he added.
He compared his job to figuring out what’s wrong in those pictures in the Highlights Magazines. Everyone is raving that AI algorithms can recognize a stop sign 70 percent of the time, but the job of a radiologist is much more complex than that.
“Being a radiologist is not really recognizing something like a stop sign, but more the fact that the stop sign is underwater and there are fish stopping at the stop sign,” said Higgins. “I think that’s closer to what we actually do as radiologists when we are interpreting images and trying to figure out not only if there is an abnormality there but what does it mean in terms of the clinical care and the patient’s clinical history.”
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