ASH 2023 | Why do we need AI in the hematology clinic?

You know, AI is now a buzzword in many things, in private world and private life, as well as in the world where we have to work. There are many, many options to apply AI tools, and in hematology there are many, many things we have to deliver for patients care. That starts with the diagnosis, we have to make our rounds, take the history of patients, organize many different workflows for treatment, decide about treatment plans, look into the information that is available for clinical trials, for FDA-approved drugs, and do a lot of more things to help patients to get along with the malignant disease, hopefully being cured. And all these tasks are taking a lot of time, need personnel, nurses, doctors, diagnostic staff. And we are lacking all this personnel, but we have more and more patients. We have more and more options for them, and we could cure more and more patients if we would be in all aspects, state of the art and know what we are going to do. And I think in many of these points I just addressed, AI could help us to support our daily routine.

I’m running a diagnostic laboratory, and I can tell you that we already implement AI in our diagnostic procedures before humans start to work and finally write the reports. The same is possible for summarizing very huge information that is available, like all the scientific new papers published, all the talks that are given at this conference, for example. Also AI can help us to be in a very short time, a state of the art and know what is really today, what you have to know. All these things together, including apps to help patients, to follow up patients at home, can be driven and are already driven by AI, as we use in our daily routine with our cell phones anyhow. And therefore right now already, and I can tell from my lab this is true, many AI tools, options with pattern recognition, with phenotypes, with genotypes, with genomes, but even with large language models to write reports can be used or can be piloted today. And the same is true for doctors in the wards in hematology, for nurses to be supported by these tools and finally help patients better to get a quicker diagnosis, a better treatment and hopefully a higher rate of cure. And therefore I see many, many options already today, but especially in the next five years, to implement AI in the hematological clinic.