In a previous AI in Action column, we argued that in the world of health care, administrative applications of artificial intelligence were the low-hanging fruit. Sometimes, however, it is reasonable to reach for higher branches of the tree, and clinical applications of AI fall into that category. We expect that someday many important diagnosis and treatment decisions will be made or augmented by AI applications. Today we are in the early stages of achieving that objective.
Most of the advances currently made by clinical AI are coming from innovative health care institutions. One prominent example is Mayo Clinic, a hospital and research center that was founded in Rochester, Minnesota, more than 150 years ago. It is consistently listed in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of top hospitals and excels in a variety of specialty areas. At any given time, it has approximately 12,000 research studies underway. In our experience, there is no health care provider organization doing more with AI than Mayo Clinic.