Giving Compass' Take:

• MedCity News explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical arena and argues that it has the potential to improve diagnostics, while also reducing fraud and waste.

• Practitioners still need to understand AI better and know where implementation will work, so there's a lot of learning left to be done. How can nonprofits in the space help provide the resources to assist?

• Here's more about how digital healthcare can help the public good.

Every major technological breakthrough has taken time to reach full potential. You might be reading this on your smart phone while flying across the country, but consider that the first computers took up entire rooms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is going through the same growing pains. Is AI the cure-all for all our problems? No. Does it offer great benefit in specific business applications? Yes, and with time these will expand — with particular promise already being realized in health care.

The first foray into AI was 1950’s “Turing Test” to see if a computer could “think” well enough to convince a human that the computer itself was human. From there, the potential for machines to learn and think like humans grew. But with the hopes and dreams of “augmented” intelligence also came unrealistic expectations and hype.

I would argue that today’s AI is more realistic, especially as it is already being applied in health care settings. Computers can augment professional expertise by automating repetitive, complex analyses and identifying patterns in large amounts of data. AI works best when it has been designed to use the right data to solve a specific problem. In the hands of skilled professionals, AI can support better clinical care, predict early signs of disease and reduce fraud and waste.

Read the full article about hype vs. reality in healthcare AI by Steve Griffiths at MedCity News.