Orthopedics Today discusses the application and increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through rapid technological advances in the health care sector, including orthopedics.

Mark Alan Fontana, PhD, senior director of data science at HSS, explained while there is current interest in AI, more research is needed before it can make a bigger impact in orthopedics. “I think health care in general tends to lag behind other industries in terms of using tech and adopting new methods,” said Dr. Fontana. “Part of that is because it is inherently conservative ... by nature, given the stakes are high. We are dealing with life and death. The security issues are also paramount, all the HIPAA regulations. It makes data more challenging for researchers and others developing these things to share across organizations and so data tends to be more siloed.”

While the data that AI and predictive models compile can be a good source of hypothesis generation for research, Dr. Fontana noted these models can detect patterns in prior data and apply these patterns to newly input data, which may lead to predictive models giving advice that parrots societal and social biases within the data. “It highlights a necessity of testing models not only for their accuracy, not only whether they work in the real world ... but also if they are equally effective on all types of patients or if they are not equally effective, quantifying that and properly caveating that as they are being used,” he said. 

Furthermore, predictive models require continuous upkeep, which may not always be possible depending on the organization. In addition, these models are not one-size fits all and require careful curation from hospital to hospital, said Dr. Fontana.

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