Al has the ability to change the way we interact with the world

The ways that Artificial Intelligence shapes medicine are emerging.

- Dr Ali A Smith

They aren't really the ones that were predicted. Whilst we have invested in X-Ray interpretation by AI, it's not a massive step forward. We knew that was going to happen. It's a small cost reduction. It frees up a bit of time, it's rather like employing a few more people.

The ability of Al to summarise records wasn't one of the things that people were excited about when we talked about opportunities a few years back. We thought about self driving cars and diagnostic support.

We are still waiting for those. The version of Al that we currently have access to is really a Large Language Model.

That means it's based on language and what words go together. Al is remarkably able to write documents, summarise documents and rearrange information in a way that we as humans interpret as helpful.

In recent months companies have been releasing AI software that supports Doctors in what are really admin roles.

We absolutely hate having to write extensively in notes or generate discharge letters. We have had support for those activities. Secretarial support.