John Halamka on the 4 Big Challenges to AI Adoption in Healthcare

At HIMSS21 Digital on Monday, the president of Mayo Clinic Platform said "augmentation of human decision making is going to be greatly beneficial" – but some hurdles need to be overcome first.

The promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning for healthcare delivery is bright – but significant challenges around bias, equity, and information development and delivery still need to be addressed head-on for AI’s promise to become reality.

Speaking Monday at HIMSS21 Digital, Dr. John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, shared his insights about AI’s ability to improve health system efficiency, patient outcomes and physician workflows.

Additionally, he addressed the growing concern of AI bias and discussed the safeguards necessary to guarantee equity in AI-supported healthcare.

Halamka sees an environment in which AI provides large, diverse datasets of past patient information that physicians can leverage to augment their own personal experience and knowledge when treating patients.

Such a system could, for example, give an emergency physician important facts that prompt the physician to look beyond an initial diagnosis (erratic behavior due to the presence of cannabis) for an issue he or she hadn’t considered (the patient has meningitis).

"AI augmentation of human decision-making is going to be greatly beneficial," said Halamka.