AI: FRIEND OR FOE?

Dalton Fabian, PharmD, RPh, Data Scientist, UnityPoint Health

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has been a hot topic for many years. Companies using computer vision for radiology services and machine learning to predict patient adverse health outcomes is becoming more commonplace. However, the conversation around AI has hit a fever pitch recently with the introduction of the newest AI entrant, ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can write code, summarize long text, and help answer questions without requiring the user to dig through a bunch of links. Needless to say, there is a lot of promise that we're seeing from AI currently. What then is the main question that pharmacy professionals should be asking themselves about AI? I’d argue that it’s, ‘Is AI going to be my friend or a foe?’ Let's dig in a bit.

AI: OUR FRIEND

AI will be a friend to pharmacy professionals in many ways. AI like ChatGPT can understand medical concepts to an extent. To see this in action, just ask the most recent update of ChatGPT (that uses GPT-4), ‘What is the first line therapy for diabetes?’ It will describe the nuance between type 1 and type 2 diabetes while also discussing basal and bolus insulin treatment for type 1 diabetes and lifestyle modification as first line therapy for type 2 diabetes. It also mentions metformin as a common first medication after lifestyle modification. When you review the response, it’s clear that ChatGPT has a decent grasp on medical concepts.

With this understanding of healthcare (and more future healthcare-specific training), AI can help us to be more efficient professionals. A future example could include typing a drug information question into a healthcare-focused chat interface and getting an answer back instead of manually searching through a book or web resource where you endlessly scroll. Additionally, research summarization is a feature that is already available in ChatGPT derivatives that can summarize research papers for you. These programs allow you to “talk” to the research papers to better understand the findings. Uses like these will help us get clinical and medication questions answered quicker and spend more time doing what we love: patient care.

AI can also assist clinicians by helping to find patients who require the most attention for better prioritization and more specific interventions. AI can help clinicians identify which patients are most likely to have an adverse health outcome, and these patients can be surfaced automatically. In my work as a Data Scientist and incorporating machine learning, I've built dashboards that highlight patients most likely to readmit within 30 days or those most likely to have emergency room or inpatient stays in the future to help nurses and pharmacists prioritize follow-ups or enroll patients in care management. This will help clinicians save time prioritizing patients and allow more focus on interventions.

AI: A POTENTIAL FOE

However great AI can theoretically be, it also has the potential for unforeseen consequences. Our pharmacy profession must be clear about any possible negative impacts of AI and identify solutions to these problems ahead of time. For example, AI can worsen inequalities in healthcare. AI is only as good as the data and patterns from the past that it’s trained on. If these models are trained on homogenous populations and then used for patient care in diverse settings, the system can perpetuate current inequalities. One solution can be to ask vendors about the breakdown of the patient population the AI used when it was built and consider if that population matches the patients that you care for.

AI: A GAME CHANGING OPPORTUNITY

The current moment in healthcare is shaping up to be one of the most impactful in modern history, thanks to AI. We have the opportunity to make our work as pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy students, or other support personnel exponentially more impactful to the patients we serve. By being aware of the evolving AI landscape, we can make sure that we are using it in ways that improve outcomes while minimizing any negative impacts. ■

Dr. Fabian presented IPA’s September 2022 2/2/2 webinar on this topic. Scan the QR code to watch!