Second opinion: doctors split over letting AI diagnose patients

Radiation oncologist Professor John Boyages, from the Icon Cancer Centre in Wahroonga, is excited about using the new technology to enhance his practice including to help read breast scans in the future.

“We are using artificial intelligence to a small extent in medicine, but I think it is something we should embrace rather than be frightened of,” he said. “I’m really excited about it. I love digital information. I think anything that helps the doctor make a diagnosis is important.”

While the experience, intuition and wisdom of a doctor could not be replaced, Boyages said artificial intelligence could make the doctor’s job easier by gathering research information and detecting a potential spot of cancer. Particularly when radiologists were prone to getting tired after reading mammogram after mammogram.

“Their mind might wander for five seconds thinking about something else, and they might miss something,” he said.

“It has huge potential to increase the cancer diagnosis rate and say to a radiologist, “have you looked at that spot there” – it might circle it in red.”

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Boyages said ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence would also empower patients with more information about their condition.

His endocrinologist brother, Professor Steven Boyages, is also enthusiastic about the use of AI: saying it had the “potential to revolutionise healthcare delivery by providing more accurate diagnoses, more personalised treatments, and more efficient healthcare services”.

Uses for AI in healthcare, other than for medical imaging analysis, included predicting patient outcomes based on their medical history, skin cancer diagnosis, developing personalised treatment plans and chatbots.

New Zealand rugby star Sir John Kirwan, through his company Groov, created a mental health app in which he appeared as a digital version of himself using artificial intelligence. Digital JK or DJK appeared as a personalised wellbeing coach designed to help people manage poor sleep, anxiety and stress.

In a media release, Kirwan said “digital humans are not a replacement for real therapists, but AI is a really important part of the future of mental wellbeing.”

AI company Health Catalyst said it was working with Southern NSW Local Health District to apply AI models to improve data systems. The company’s general manager David Dembo said AI has been used in healthcare to help medical professionals assess risk factors for patients.

Similar AI technology is being used in digital calculators that measure health risks.

Dembo said AI would assist rather than replace humans. “The image recognition models in radiology are quite incredible and very accurate. They will often spot things that some radiologists might miss. That doesn’t mean the radiologist gets replaced; the radiologist gets supported by AI.”

The Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University last month published a review of 266 safety events involving AI-assisted technology reported to the US watchdog.

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The article, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, found that most events (82 per cent) involved cases in which the AI was given incorrect or insufficient data required to work properly, while 11 per cent related to problems with the algorithm or the hardware of the device itself.

Only 16 per cent actually led to patients being harmed, but two-thirds were found to have the potential to cause harm, and 4 per cent were categorised as “near-miss events” in which users intervened.

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