Will AI Replace Cancer Docs?
AI is coming for our jobs — lots of them.
According to a recently published report by CB Insights AI could take up to 10.5 million jobs in the future.
The rise of AI has led to some speculation in the health community about whether doctors will be replaced by AI, whether for routine care, or more specialized tasks such as cancer diagnosis.
In fact, cancer diagnosis is one particularly hot area area for AI and machine learning, as illustrated by the Innovation Map below. This map, generated via the DigiHealth Informer Exploration Engine (coming soon), shows some of the themes that dominated online and social content between July 2016 and July 2017 related to AI and cancer diagnosis.
As you can see work by Google, IBM and AI + smartphone tech is attracting lots of attention.
So, does this mean that radiologists and pathologists (or even standard diagnostic technologies) will be replaced by machines soon?
Experts I’ve spoken to about this topic say “no.” AI will be an important component of cancer detection and diagnosis, but won’t replace “gold standard” tissue biopsies and human experts in the short- or medium-term.
