Fatima Rodriguez, MD, MPH: AI in the Clinical Cardiology Space

Fatima Rodriguez, MD, MPH, a cardiologist from Stanford Medicine, moderated the presentation, “Using AI to Improve Health Equity” at the Family Heart Global Summit on September 23, 2024, in Dallas, Texas. The session focused on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the cardiology field.

This past year, artificial intelligence (AI) has weaved its way into research for numerous healthcare fields, including psychiatry and dermatology. Cardiologists, like psychiatrists and dermatologists, are also experimenting with AI, as Rodriguez shared during her session. For instance, Rodriguez is evaluating AI’s ability to diagnose heart disease early by using already existing data.

HCPLive spoke with Rodriguez during the summit about currently studied AI tools in the cardiology space and how these tools may create disparities in receiving care. Rodriguez said the AI implantation is the hardest part—not the creation.

“We'll often say discovery is the first mile, but actually getting it to patients, which is arguably the most important part, is the last mile,” she said.

A lot of anxiety surrounds AI in the healthcare space, but Rodriguez knows it has a lot of benefits. AI can allow patients and clinicians to receive information much quicker and in a more digestible way. Rodriguez uses it to translate documents into different languages and believes it does well at generation.

“The reality is that it's coming, and I think we have to learn how to work with it and really think of augmented intelligence how can it take over some of the tasks that are burdensome to us as clinicians and help our patients get in charge of their health a little better,” Rodriguez said.

AI models in the past have not been as good at reading people of color, and Rodriguez said this may be because of biases in the algorithm—and there’s always bias. She said that, like in the real world, clinicians need to be aware of the existing biases.

“It's not that the artificial intelligence is unfair, it's that we live in an unfair world,” Rodriguez said. “With a lot of discrimination, a lot of biases, we need to be aware of that. That AI technology is going to result in a decision that could really hurt or impact our patients. We especially need to have guardrails around that.”

References

^{Rodriguez, F. Using AI to Improve Health Equity. Family Heart Global Summit 2024 on September 23, 2024, in Dallas, Texas.}