Dr John Frownfelter Discusses What Is Needed to Get Healthcare Comfortable With AI in Practice

Healthcare needs to learn to adapt faster to changes, said John Frownfelter, MD, FACP, chief medical officer of Jvion.

Transcript

Healthcare has taken longer to adopt technology than other sectors, but are we reaching a turning point? Is the industry embracing technology more?

Well, the speed of healthcare is really adapting to change in the clinical practice. I’ll give you an example. There was a core measure that CMS used a decade ago, 15 years ago, for treatment of heart attacks and giving a beta blocker in the hospital. From when the first study by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute came out in 1982 or so—and the study was cut short because they recognized giving a beta blocker after heart attack reduced mortality dramatically—it took 15 years for that to be woven and completely embedded in the clinical practice. One dramatic, lifesaving action took 25 years to change. We can’t afford to do that.

So, we have to, one, electronify data if you will. We have to convert it to electronic. And then use the power of AI [artificial intelligence] to drive change more and more rapidly. Much more rapidly. What’s required of healthcare then, and physicians in particular, is to begin to trust those changes that I didn’t learn in medical school or that I don’t see published in literature but actually that this patient I’m being recommended to do this action for that I didn’t do for the last patient, that creates a great discomfort. And physicians are going to have to get more comfortable with the dynamicness of recommendation for AI to really bring the true value that it will.