Meet the Boston doctors who use AI and machine learning to match patients and experts

Some regions, such as Ghana, where Dr. Joan Laloveire, a cardiac intensivist at Boston Children's Hospital, worked, don't have enough doctors and other health care providers to meet people's needs.

“143 million people in low- and middle-income countries are not getting the surgery they need each year,” Lalovea told GBH. morning paper Co-host Jeremy Siegel. “No matter how efficient this information flow is, you're talking about millions of lives.”

That's why she first worked on artificial intelligence in healthcare.

“Patients need specialists. When you get sick, you don't just look for a hospital or a doctor. You look for a hospital or a doctor who can take care of your problems,” she said. “When we have that level of data, we can match experts who can help and bring in volunteers who are already working hard in low- and middle-income countries to work with and support people on the ground. We really wanted it to be targeted at surgery and targeted at the people who need it the most.”

The type of AI she's using uses machine learning to identify patterns and pair patients with health care providers who can help them.

This week, LaRovere is attending the Imagination in Action conference. This conference brings together people working with AI in various fields at MIT to discuss their work.

“Big data within hospitals can help us identify a variety of specific diseases, among other things, and help us understand potential new treatments, new signals, and things we couldn't see until we accumulated data at a different scale.” ” he said. “There are so many possibilities and possibilities. I think it's very exciting to be a doctor in this time of change.”

Through the Virtue Foundation's Actionable Data Initiative, LaRovere and her team can input data from social media and other sources and use machine learning to detect patterns that may indicate specific needs. The company will then use that information to guide non-governmental organizations and health facilities to the areas most in need of assistance.

“We use artificial intelligence to understand where health facilities and health NGOs are located, what their capabilities are, what specialties they have there, and what capabilities they have. “We are identifying additional areas of expertise,” she said.

The goal is to expand the number of people doctors can serve, Laloveire said.

“AI offers us the opportunity to truly help and care for those most in need and make the invisible visible,” she said.

So, do the rapid advances in AI scare her?

“Yes and no,” Mr. Lalovere said. “I think it's all up to our intentions, right? Just like the AI, the scalpel is also a tool. And I can get a scalpel and do the surgery. Or my colleague can do the surgery for me. And through that, you really change someone's life. Scalpels can also be a deadly weapon. So it all comes down to understanding where the medical needs are in the middle and lower-class areas. It depends on our intentions on how we use this tool, just as we use big data to