An Interview with Mariam Shokralla, Digital Health consultant

We spoke to Mariam Shokralla, Digital Health consultant at the World Health Organization. She gave us her thoughts on AI in medicine ahead of her presentation at Intelligent Health (9-10 September 2020, Online), the world's largest online summit dedicated to AI in medicine.

So Mariam, what excites you most about the application of AI in healthcare?:

It's the potential to decrease health inequalities especially geographical inequalities. Ethically grounded AI solutions can help extend quality care to marginalized people, transform our health systems from being reactive to predictive and preventive, from Tertiary care to primary care especially to NCDs.

It can also allow better qualitative care when physicians time is saved to attentive care for patients.it also will enable us to reorganize resources more efficiently and tackle social determinants of health.

What’s your biggest fear about the application of AI in health/medicine?:

We don't fully understand the full potential of AI and making sure that we have the right ethical and governance framework in place to govern any unintended consequence or misuse might be tricky.so it needs a dynamic ongoing vigilance, evaluation, and professional reflection on the societal impact of AI. At the end of the day, we need to make sure we are not creating a power above human power.

How do you think AI will make its biggest mark in healthcare in the next 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?:

Clinically in Diagnostics. From public Health prospective: in tackling social determinants of health and risk factors for NCDs which are mostly lifestyle choices.

How do you think AI will change human contact in healthcare?:

It will eventually change the relationship dynamics between citizen and health care, expectations, and responsibilities but we don't exactly know by evidence where this shift will be towards, hopefully to a more trustable one.

What does AI mean for the skill requirements of health professionals? How will it change?:

We would need a new generations of tech equipped medical staff. There is a great hesitancy among doctors because issues like accountability and transparency should be nailed first. The dream is to allow doctors to focus on the qualitative aspect of care and delegate things like pattern recognition to technology. This doesn't mean that AI can replace doctors but it can complement and augment their capability to holistically care for their patients. They are the clinical decision-makers. AI is just a tool.

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