Getting doctors and technologists to talk about artificial intelligence

To familiarise health professionals with the latest artificial intelligence (AI) tools, so that they can apply them in their daily practice for the benefit of patients: this is the aim of the MEDICA AI conference, which will be held on July 16th at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF). The event is organised by the Digital Surgery Lab, a multidisciplinary team from the Breast Unit of the CF led by surgeon Pedro Gouveia.
 
In general, at AI-related events, says Gouveia, "technologists always talk with great enthusiasm about the democratisation of AI tools, which can be used in a wide range of industries". But this message doesn't get through as it should in the health sector, which is a market "whose regulation is completely different from other industries", and where mistakes can seriously jeopardise people's health and well-being.
 
Although the implementation of AI tools to improve the productivity and efficiency of automatable processes (such as writing medical reports) has already begun in various healthcare institutions, the technology is not yet being used in the clinical field.
 
The specificity of the healthcare area is compounded by the fact that there are usually few health professionals at major conferences that seriously address the subject of AI. "We've had several events related to artificial intelligence at the Foundation, but they haven't really been primarily directed to health professionals," emphasises Gouveia.
 
This leads, according to him, to "an obvious lack of technological literacy" [on the part of healthcare professionals], which "prevents them from keeping up with the evolution of best practices within the healthcare field – practices that, with the help of technology and in particular AI, could lead to better decisions and treatments".
 
The result: there is a communication gap between technologists and doctors and, consequently, a low level of AI use in healthcare. And it is this gap that the MEDICA AI conference, which will be attended by healthcare professionals and technologists, now aims to bridge. "We wanted to fill this gap, which exists at the national and even the international level, and build a conference whose name speaks for itself to address artificial intelligence in medicine," says the Gouveia.
 
"Why do we need these conferences?" he asks. And he replies: "because, in fact, in the way we practice medicine 50 years after the introduction of computers in medical offices, the only thing that has changed is that instead of writing medical records on paper, we now have text editors to do it [in digital format]."
 
At MEDICA AI, healthcare professionals and engineers will be side by side. However, most of the nearly 20 invited speakers will be healthcare professionals, doctors, "because they are the ones who can make the decision to use technology for the benefit of patients, prescribing interventions that use artificial intelligence – which, by the way, will thus become reimbursable by insurance companies", Gouveia points out. "Our target audience is obviously health professionals, but also researchers, the academic community, investors and entrepreneurs."

Medical projects with AI

With the exception of a module on ethics, the morning of this one-day conference will be essentially devoted to CF projects that use artificial intelligence. "The idea is to show that there are doctors and researchers, particularly from the Champalimaud Foundation, who have already started down the path of technological literacy by trying to implement new tools using artificial intelligence in their projects, so that they can later be implemented in clinical practice. And to show this to a wide audience of health professionals who don't use these tools or don't know about them," explains Gouveia.
 
Among the projects that will be presented are The Warehouse, a multidisciplinary initiative by CF to create a cutting-edge institute in the field of Digital Therapeutics; the "Operating Theatre of the Future", which is being developed by the Digital Surgery Lab itself; and the Cinderella project, also part of the Breast Unit, which uses AI to allow breast cancer patients to choose the type of breast-conserving surgery they prefer from an aesthetic point of view (https://fchampalimaud.org/pt-pt/news/projecto-cinderella-o-direito-de-o…).
 
In the afternoon, several start-ups and a clinical expert from Google Health – Dillon Obika – will talk about what is happening "outside the Champalimaud Foundation ecosystem", says Gouveia. "We're going to see a series of case studies, success stories of artificial intelligence in health, both in the field of applied research and translation into medical products, some of which are already on the market, others at different stages of development," he emphasises. Among the various projects that will be presented during MEDICA AI are remote monitoring of chronic patients with new telemedicine technologies; support for decision-making in hospital management; and the use of augmented reality for surgical planning and improving the precision of surgeries in the operating theatre. In all these projects, the use of AI emerges as a key technology.
 
Miguel Melo, from the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Coimbra, will also speak about the introduction of technology in the continuous and networked monitoring of diabetic patients – which, thanks to artificial intelligence, could make it possible to predict hypoglycaemia or complications of this disease. "Here, the lack of implementation of technological innovation is increasing the costs that this disease entails, both for patients and for health systems," says Gouveia.
 
João Eurico Fonseca, director of the Lisbon School of Medicine, will also be presenting the MedTech NEXT project, which aims to promote the digitalisation and modernisation of medical education.
 
"The option of having a large majority of medical speakers," says João Santinha, a specialist in artificial intelligence applied to medical imaging at the Digital Surgery Lab, "also aims to encourage peer education. Health professionals, by seeing that there are doctors who are already talking about these issues, already discussing them and trying to introduce them into their day-to-day practice, will realise that technologies and AI aren't as intangible as they might seem," he explains.
 
"One important thing to emphasise," says Tiago Marques, a neuroscientist and computer vision specialist who also belongs to the Digital Surgery Lab, is that "none of the artificial intelligence applications that will be presented are intended to replace the doctor’s work. The aim is always to increase doctor capabilities, to make them more efficient and effective in treating patients. Artificial intelligence facilitates the work of doctors in order to improve healthcare, and ultimately lead to the improvement of patient quality of life."
 
MEDICA AI: Tuesday July 16th 2024, from 9am to 8:30pm

Registration page (includes the full programme).
 

Text by Ana Gerschenfeld, Health&Science Writer of the Champalimaud Foundation.