The role of AI in emergency medicine: timing and deployment

While artificial intelligence is increasingly being used – formally and informally – to support medical diagnosis, its usefulness in emergency medical situations remains an open question. Can AI support doctors in situations where split-second decision-making can mean the difference between life and death? Drexel University researchers discussed this question with doctors at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to better understand how and when the technology might help them save lives.

Led by Angela Mastrianni, PhD, a Drexel alumna who is a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Health, and Aleksandra Sarcevic, PhD, a professor in the Drexel College of Computing & Informatics and director of the Interactive Systems for Healthcare Research Lab, the team examined two types of scenarios in which AI technology is used to help emergency physicians make treatment decisions.

In the first scenario, important information used in the decision…