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AI in health and medicine

Nature Medicine volume 28, pages 31–38 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to broadly reshape medicine, potentially improving the experiences of both clinicians and patients. We discuss key findings from a 2-year weekly effort to track and share key developments in medical AI. We cover prospective studies and advances in medical image analysis, which have reduced the gap between research and deployment. We also address several promising avenues for novel medical AI research, including non-image data sources, unconventional problem formulations and human–AI collaboration. Finally, we consider serious technical and ethical challenges in issues spanning from data scarcity to racial bias. As these challenges are addressed, AI’s potential may be realized, making healthcare more accurate, efficient and accessible for patients worldwide.

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Fig. 1: Overview of the progress, challenges and opportunities for AI in health.
Fig. 2
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Fig. 4: Evolving procedures for data sharing.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Tamkin and N. Phillips for their feedback. E.J.T. receives funding support from US National Institutes of Health grant UL1TR002550.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Pranav Rajpurkar, Emma Chen, Oishi Banerjee.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Pranav Rajpurkar

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Emma Chen & Oishi Banerjee

  3. Scripps Translational Science Institute, San Diego, CA, USA

    Eric J. Topol

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  1. Pranav Rajpurkar
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P.R. and E.J.T. conceptualized this Review. E.C., O.B. and P.R. were responsible for the design and synthesis of this Review. All authors contributed to writing and editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Eric J. Topol.

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Nature Medicine thanks Despina Kontos and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Karen O’Leary was the primary editor on this article and managed its editorial process and peer review in collaboration with the rest of the editorial team.

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Rajpurkar, P., Chen, E., Banerjee, O. et al. AI in health and medicine. Nat Med 28, 31–38 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01614-0

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