Shadi Jarjous, MD, chief of hospital medicine at Allentown, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Health Network, joined Becker’s to discuss how emerging technologies are shaping the future of clinical workflows and medical training.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
Question: How do you foresee AI practically impacting physician workflows and training in the next five years?
Dr. Shadi Jarjous: I really believe AI in healthcare will continue to advance rapidly. It will be instrumental in helping both practicing clinicians and trainees deliver safer, more effective and efficient care. Some obvious areas where I see AI helping frontline clinicians are documentation and administrative tasks. I think AI will eventually handle most of that work.
Another big area is efficiency. With AI, finding and sharing information will be much simpler, which will affect clinicians’ overall efficiency. On more exciting fronts, integrating AI with predictive analytics and machine learning at the point of care could revolutionize healthcare. It allows for care tailored to the patient’s situation very quickly.
But the big thing with AI — and this is where the lines sometimes get blurred — is remembering that it’s just a tool. It has limitations. As long as we understand what it can and cannot do, it will be very helpful for healthcare.
Q: What are your biggest concerns regarding AI and physician workflows?
SJ: I think the biggest concern is the notion that AI could replace physicians. In theory, it can do certain things, but there’s a lot that only humans can do. At the end of the day, AI is based on mathematical models, and it’s vulnerable to errors too. As good as it gets, there’s always a risk of something going wrong. So it’s important not to trust it 100%.
