Artificial intelligence in Healthcare and Pharmacology

Healthcare has a responsibility to ensure that physicians are prepared to effectively leverage the power of technology to serve their patients. Artificial Intelligence or AI is one such technology that is being integrated into the healthcare sector for patient’s welfare. As the practice of medicine enters the age of AI, the use of data to improve clinical decision making will grow, pushing the need for skilful medicine-machine interaction. Today, AI is being piloted in health care for faster and accurate diagnosis, to augment radiology, reduce errors due to human fatigue, decrease medical costs, assist and replace dull, repetitive, and labour-intensive tasks, minimally invasive surgery, and reduce mortality rates.

The objective of the CME was to explore the various AI-powered systems in healthcare including AI scribe, the pros and cons of AI in healthcare, clinical trials and medical education, and the ethical concerns associated with its use.

CME Highlights: Presidential address by the Dean/ CME Dr. ME Mohan revolved around the applications of AI tools to minimize physician burden & healthcare administration & documentation. The various AI-driven disease detection algorithms for identifying undiagnosed patients with under-diagnosed, uncoded, and even rare diseases in addition to detection of conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s, stroke, IHD, skin diseases & liver disease was specified. This was followed by insightful sessions on Introduction to AI, AI scribe, AI in clinical trials, ethical concerns & AI in Health Professions Education by eminent speakers from both Engineering & Medical sectors.

The sessions were followed by student debate on the topic AI in healthcare: Boon or Bane, where the students battled it out enlisting the pros & cons of AI. This was followed by valedictory.