There may soon come a day when artificial intelligence scans your EHR to give your physician a unique medical picture of you so he or she can forecast where your health is going next, says Rama Chellappa, PhD, an engineer at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University.
"We'll reach a point where AI can look comprehensively at all of our electronic health records and diagnostic images, all the medications we've taken, and can even process our patient-to-doctor conversations," Dr. Chellappa said in a March 6 Johns Hopkins Q&A. "And that will build a very personalized profile that can help us monitor our health, alert doctors to our individual needs, and predict any potential issues in the future."
Dr. Chellappa and his team are working on AI-driven applications for autism, oncology, pathology and eye care. One group, funded by the National Institutes on Aging, is examining how AI devices and technologies can assist elderly people and their caretakers.
"For example, we're envisioning robots that could interact with patients with cognitive impairments, dementia, or Alzheimer's, and help them go about their daily business," he said in the article. "We're exploring using Alexa to administer cognitive tests at home, and using Apple Watches to provide alerts of possible falls or wandering."
He said AI technology like ChatGPT is in its infancy — or its "toddler phase," as he called it — and will need more data and learning to be truly transformative.
"While ChatGPT marks an important milestone, we should be careful of how it's being used," he said. "There are many examples now of how ChatGPT just makes stuff up! That's worrisome. I hope with more training, we'll see improvement."