00:00As the role of artificial intelligence continues to be explored in the modern world, several
00:08benefits of its use in healthcare has emerged.
00:12Last week, the North Central Regional Health Authority hosted a conference that explored
00:17the relation of artificial intelligence to healthcare services.
00:22The integration of AI into our systems has the potential to not only improve patient
00:29outcomes, but also revolutionize our approach to service delivery, widen our scope in terms
00:38of patient diagnosis and treatment, and simultaneously improve the way that we interact and interface
00:46with our patients.
00:47The implications are undoubtedly significant and, dare I say, exciting.
00:54One of the guest speakers, T&T's very own Dr. Wayne Frederick, a surgical oncologist
01:00and the former president of Howard University, is well known for his work in the medical
01:05field.
01:06He encouraged T&T to capitalize on the advantages of AI in healthcare.
01:12The amputation rate here is one of the highest anywhere in the Western Hemisphere because
01:17of diabetes.
01:20That amputation rate could significantly be impacted if you can collect electronic medical
01:26records that demonstrate some type of a correlation between hemoglobin A1C and gangrene and subsequent
01:34amputation.
01:35You also don't have a prosthetic national rehab system, right, which is the other part
01:40of that issue that needs to be addressed as well.
01:43When you combine those things together, if you apply the electronic medical record that's
01:47bringing in that data, artificial intelligence, you can have a very strong preventative program
01:53where you could be actually engaging people and meeting them where they are.
01:56Dr. Frederick does admit that this can be a costly exercise, but it is a conversation
02:02he believes is worth having.
02:04A country like this, 1.3 million people with diabetics, having an ability to control their
02:11glucose that much more tightly and prevent amputation.
02:14So you may say if we give everybody who's a diabetic appropriately an insulin pump,
02:21that's going to be very costly.
02:23But then when you think of how many amputations you do anyway and the productivity you lose
02:27because those citizens can't participate in the economy in the way that you would want
02:31them to, it's probably a worthy investment.
02:33And those are the types of conversations I hope the RHA will be having with the broader
02:38community about how these things can be used in a progressive manner.
02:42While there is still so many unknowns about the use of artificial intelligence, he believes
02:48the good outweighs the bad.
02:50The unique thing about generative AI as well is that the more it learns, the better it
02:55gets.
02:56We can't predict how better it's going to get simply because how that learning is taking
03:01place and the impact it has in terms of when it's looped back and fed back into the system
03:06is so significant that we can hope that this is where it's going to get.
03:11But so far, it has been outdoing every prediction.
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