As new developments in technology continue in the medical industry, one neurosurgeon is focused on how artificial intelligence can impact patient care.
Konstantinos Margetis, MD, PhD, is the director of complex spine surgery in the department of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He is also an assistant professor of neurosurgery, orthopedics, rehabilitation and human performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Dr. Margetis recently spoke with Becker's about his plans to follow artificial intelligence during the second half of 2023.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: What are you most focused on for the second half of 2023?
Dr. Konstantinos Margetis: In the latter half of this year, my primary focus will be on the potential application of advanced artificial intelligence in the field of neurosurgery and spine surgery. Specifically, several artificial intelligence technologies have matured to a state of readiness for wider application, and it is my belief they hold vast potential for transforming our practice.
We are on the brink of an exciting future where AI capabilities continue to expand exponentially. Their potential impact on our clinical practice remains largely unpredictable, signaling a paradigm shift that could dramatically alter our approaches to patient care. One such transformative tool comes from the realm of natural language processing. We've already seen how generative models can revolutionize our learning processes, and I believe these technologies could also modify how we interact with patients, particularly in obtaining medical histories.
However, the area that has arguably the greatest potential to alter the landscape of surgery is robotics. Traditional limitations of robotics, such as planning and executing complex movements in a dynamic environment, are being overcome through modern techniques that utilize highly successful transformer neural network architectures. While clinical applications are still very early in research/development, the promise of robots replicating complex human movements, particularly in the delicate and precise work of neurosurgery and spine surgery, is hard to ignore.
This second half of the year, I will be dedicating my research efforts toward understanding how these AI innovations can be integrated into our practice to enhance patient outcomes, increase efficiency and potentially change the face of surgical intervention as we know it. The challenge lies not just in acknowledging the potential of AI, but harnessing its power effectively and ethically in the medical field.