Artificial intelligence has become a secret weapon for radiologists
Nine years ago, Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneer of artificial intelligence, shocked the medical world by declaring that it was “absolutely self-evident” that artificial intelligence would lead to the extinction of radiologists in short order.
But over time, these specialists - whose work goes beyond image analysis - are booming, as a New York Times report noted.
In fact, this field is experiencing explosive growth amid a looming workforce crisis.
The Association of American Medical Colleges forecasts that the United States will face a shortage of 42,000 radiologists and other specialists by 2033.
Rather than stealing doctors' jobs, the report suggests, AI has become a secret weapon for radiologists, enabling them to instantly measure organs, automatically identify abnormalities, and even detect diseases years before traditional methods.
At Mayo Clinic, where the number of radiologists has skyrocketed by 55% since Hinton's prediction, the radiology department has expanded to include a 40-person team of AI scientists, researchers, analysts and engineers, who have licensed and developed more than 250 AI models, from tissue analyzers to disease predictors.
“Five years from now, it would be malpractice not to use artificial intelligence,” John Halamka, Mayo Clinic's president of the platform, who oversees the health system's digital initiatives, said in the report.
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