Orthopedics Today highlights the perspective of Jonathan M. Vigdorchik, MD, hip and knee surgeon at HSS, on the use of artificial intelligence and robotics in total knee arthroplasty and knee osteoarthritis.

Dr. Vigdorchik wrote, “We are entering a new era in orthopedic surgery as we are at the tipping point for using technology in joint replacement: We have surpassed 10% of surgeons using some form of robotics and computer assistance in hip and knee replacement. The next 5 to 10 years in joint replacement will be about data, data acquisition and data science. There will soon be a day when a patient will walk into your office, you will make an analysis and create a patient-specific risk profile, find a target for the surgery, achieve that target with high accuracy and precision using robotics/technology, and then monitor that patient’s outcome, which will then feed back to the original algorithm. This is the core philosophy behind robotics and artificial intelligence in joint replacement.”

He concluded, “However, along with this shift come new challenges. With respect to artificial intelligence, there is no question that machine learning and deep learning can digitize datasets and run analyses that no human can ever dream of doing. But there are reports of significant racial biases of the underlying algorithms, skewed against minorities. We must overcome these biases for everyone to trust the information and use it effectively; work is currently underway in these regards.”

Read the full article at Healio.com/news/orthopedics.