TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | d e c 2 0 1 9/JA N 2 02 0 27 care of the patients—the ER doc, the neurologist, the radiologist—make treatment decisions with better data," he said. Rohren, the Baylor radiology chair, agrees that AI will improve decision-making without replac- ing the physicians who interpret imaging. "It will make our jobs and roles a little different than they are now, but it will absolutely not put radiologists out of business," he said. "Machines and machine learn- ing are very good at information handling, but they are very poor at making judgments based on that information. … The radiologist will continue to be critical." Yet Rohren anticipates a trans- formed discipline. "I think radiology in the future will be a different profession than it is today," he said. "The radiologist has the potential to be the curator and the purveyor of a large amount of data and information that, given the limitations of human brain power and information systems, we just don't have access to today. But with AI working alongside the radiologist, I think the radiologist is in the position to be at the hub of a lot of health care." Innovation in the TMC Optellum, a United Kingdom-based company, brought its AI software for lung cancer diagnosis and treatment to the TMC Innovation Institute this year and spent several months in the TMCx accelerator. The product identifies patients at risk for lung cancer, expedites optimal therapy for those with cancer and reduces intervention for millions who do not need treatment. Company founder and CEO Vaclav Potesil, Ph.D., said he decided to focus on lung cancer after losing an aunt within a year of her Stage 4 diagnosis. She never smoked. "I've seen firsthand how very healthy people can be killed and it's still the most common and deadliest cancer worldwide," he said. "We are really focused on enabling cancer patients to be diagnosed at the February 21-22, 2020 // Houston, TX Come connect with global health experts, missionaries and organizations; be inspired by over 35 speakers; and find your mission in the M3 Conference Exhibit Hall with over 75 organizations working in the areas of medical missions, orphan care, water, sanitation, hygiene, human trafficking, education, and more! Register today at m3missions.com Save $5 with code: TMCPULSE2020 Connect with others. Be inspired. Find your mission. earliest possible stage and be cured. It's not just the modeled data on the computer. It's address- ing the right clinical problems to add value to doctors." Potesil noted that two cancer- ous growths on the left lung of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were discov- ered early because of tests on her broken ribs, which were examined after she fell in 2018. UTMB is starting a new AI radiology project soon, Walser said, that also aides in early detection. "The computer scans every X-ray from the ICU and if they see some- thing that looks like it might be a problem, they pop it up to the top of my list, so I look at that one first," he said. "In other words, if there are 200 chest X-rays from Jennie [Sealy Hospital] and there's one that's a pneumothorax [collapsed lung] that could kill a patient and it's all the way down on the bottom of my stack because the last name is Zimmerman, the computer will push it up to the top for me. That's our first foray into AI." Baylor College of Medicine and Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center researchers have explored using algorithms to interpret breast lesions on mammograms, improve cancer detection with breast MRIs and predict which sinusitis patients might benefit most from surgery, Rohren said. He hopes for an AI collaboration among institutions in Houston's medical city. "I personally believe the Texas Medical Center could become the international hub of AI—not only for radiology, but for any aspect of medicine," Rohren said. "We have so many elite health care institutions sitting right here right next door to each other. We have outstanding undergraduate universities right here in the city with data scientists and engineers. We have all the components to be able to develop a program. What it will require is for us all to work together."

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