AI in Cancer Care Can Be Powerful, but There Will Be Learning Curves, Says Glenn Balasky

While artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot of potential to transform care, if doctors feel like the information AI presents is not credible or accurate, they’ll lose confidence in the technology, said Glenn Balasky, executive director, Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers. He highlighted the need for experimentation and demonstration projects before AI is rolled out completely to prevent any loss in credibility that has doctors avoid using AI.

Balasky spoke at the annual Community Oncology Alliance Payer Exchange Summit on Oncology Payment Reform, September 9 to 10, in Reston, Virginia.

Transcript

What guardrails need to be in place in cancer care to ensure AI is used correctly and safely. How can community oncology practices toe the line of using AI for the benefit of patients and practices without running afoul of the downsides of AI use?

I think it's going to have to take some experimentation and demonstration projects, because I think there's 2 parts of it. We don't know what AI will tell us [and] we also don't know how our providers, our doctors, our teams, are going to respond to it. So, I think this is going to be both a learning curve as far as information, but [we] can’t underestimate the power. Doctors are in charge. They're accountable. Their medical license says that they're supposed to take care of the patient. If we present to them the first time [and] we show them something [clinical from AI] and it says something that's totally wrong, we're going to lose them, not for weeks, but for months, as far as credibility is concerned. So, I think the credibility of the information [is important]. Medicine is a field that's learned experienced [and] is always evolving, but we're going to have to meet our people where they are to make sure that this is a success.