The right tech can help give doctors back time with patients: AMA CEO – American Medical Association

Augmentedintelligence(AI) iscertainto bea key player in revolutionizinghealthcare for the next generation of physiciansand patients. Butwhat about actual intelligence, the kind producedby human brains?

It, too, will be instrumental, AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD, noted in his address to delegates at the opening session of the 2019 AMA Interim Meeting in San Diego.

To make his point, Dr. Madara cited a recent anecdote from tech entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk, the founder of electric automaker Tesla. When the car company struggled to keep up with the production schedule on the Tesla Model 3, Musk came to the conclusion that the problem was an overreliance on AI.

Now, this story captures two principles, Dr. Madara said. The first is that to produce something of value, one needs to perform a complicated series of discrete actions in a highly coordinated way. The second, the best outcomes may require powerful technologies optimally mixed with distinctively human capabilities.

These principles, Dr. Madara said, are reflected in the AMAs work on evaluating and acting on chronic disease. Among the interventions the CEO cited:

Policies and reports adopted in the AMA House of Delegates over the past half decade that detail significant health burdens of diabetes and hypertension.

When complete, our collective work will have ushered in more accurate and organized measures of blood pressure, better insights into how to better control blood pressure, no paperwork, and added revenue to physicians for evaluating and acting on hypertension, this the No. 1 killer in our society, Dr. Madara said.

This blood pressure story is but one example of how were harnessing the power of the AMAexpertise across many units cross-leveraging many strengthsand doing so in a systematic and coordinated fashion.

In providing additional examples of what can be accomplished with the collective power of the AMAs membership, Dr. Madara again called out the AMA Ed Hub.

Launched in May, the platform hosts a broad spectrum continuing medical education (CME) content. Some of that material is sourced from the American College of Radiology, with other medical specialties, expressing interest in a similar arrangement.

Ed Hub also began electronically syncing CME offerings with specialty boards, such as the American Board of Internal Medicine, and has the capability to connect with state licensing processes. That atuomatic tracking is now being piloted in North Carolina, Tennessee and Maine, and other states will follow.

Taking the concept of innovation a step further, Ed Hub is working with the AMAs tech incubator, Health2047 Inc., to potentially develop AI features that could personalize a physicians CME options.

Imagine a future where your CME choices are crafted as a bespoke menu, customized to what you actually see in your practice, and where the hassles of filling out forms for credentialing and licensing disappear. Thats the pathway were building, Dr. Madara said.

Technology advancements, Dr. Madara said, are only a tool to provide better carenot a way to replace physicians, nurses and other dedicated health professionals.

Dr. Madara illustrated that point through the changes in the process of counting blood cell types. As a medical student, he counted them using a clicker. Over time, that process changed from a clicker to a coulter counter to a flow cytometers to a cell separator.

Each time, the old task was replaced by a more interesting new taskallowing advances in diagnosis and therapy, he said.When it comes to powerful new tools and machines, its important to remember these replace tasks, not jobs. Its our role to imagine new frontiersnew tasksthat further advance our fields with yesterdays brute labor now taken up by the machines.

In the end, more time with patients for physicians because of these advancements will change the job, in a way that makes it more fulfilling.

Count me among those excited about the future of medicine, and the powerful new tools that will define the new era of personalized patient care, and also personalized physician education driven by the AMA Ed Hub, he said. Im confident in the physicians ability to always reach the next future statein part because physicians will always have the AMA as their powerful ally in patient care, and because we will forever strive to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.

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The right tech can help give doctors back time with patients: AMA CEO - American Medical Association