Dr. Karen DeSalvo, the Chief Health Officer of Google Health, has announced that Google has launched new artificial intelligence (AI) components for healthcare. These new developments include MedLM and the release of SCIN.
"We are at an inflection point in AI where we can see its potential to transform health on a planetary scale," said Karen DeSalvo, Google Health's chief health officer. "It seems clear that in the future, AI won't replace doctors, but doctors who use AI will replace those who don't."
According to Mobile Health News, these advancements underscore the growing use of AI in the medical field. They also highlight Google's recent efforts, including last year's launch of MedLM, a model designed to answer questions and alleviate confusion within the medical community. However, DeSalvo addressed a common concern that AI could potentially replace doctors' jobs. She emphasized that while AI will assist in many medical tasks, it will not replace human professionals. MedLM has been further developed to function for chest x-rays with an aim to aid in classification and alleviate some of the workload for physicians.
Mobile Health News also reports that innovation in these developments is still ongoing. The primary goal of this technological advancement and use of AI is to lighten the load and automate more mundane tasks. Such tasks might include sifting through patient needs and information to gain a deeper understanding of medical issues or simply expedite data processing through AI. Given that the medical world is 'multimodal', using several modes of data to establish issues and connections, it can be inherently challenging and tedious for doctors to work through such data. This problem is being addressed by AI performance, which is proving to be a lifesaver and time saver for doctors everywhere.
According to National Institutes of Health, DeSalvo also serves as Assistant Secretary for Health and National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Throughout her career, she has been driven by a commitment to provide quality care for all populations, particularly those most vulnerable. A graduate from Tulane University with a medical degree, she has also been involved in areas improving public policy and public health serving as a professor of medicine.
