[Artificial intelligence in medicine: limits and obstacles.].

Journal: Recenti progressi in medicina
Published Date:

Abstract

Data scientists and physicians are starting to use artificial intelligence (AI) even in the medical field in order to better understand the relationships among the huge amount of data coming from the great number of sources today available. Through the data interpretation methods made available by the recent AI tools, researchers and AI companies have focused on the development of models allowing to predict the risk of suffering from a specific disease, to make a diagnosis, and to recommend a treatment that is based on the best and most updated scientific evidence. Even if AI is used to perform unimaginable tasks until a few years ago, the awareness about the ongoing revolution has not yet spread through the medical community for several reasons including the lack of evidence about safety, reliability and effectiveness of these tools, the lack of regulation accompanying hospitals in the use of AI by health care providers, the difficult attribution of liability in case of errors and malfunctions of these systems, and the ethical and privacy questions that they raise and that, as of today, are still unanswered.

Authors

  • Eugenio Santoro
    Laboratorio di informatica medica, Dipartimento di Salute Pubblica, IRCCS - Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri".