AI on the Agenda at 2024 ATS, Says Conference Chair | 2024 ATS

In some areas of the country, staffing shortages have plagued pulmonology and particularly pediatric pulmonology. Debra Boyer, M.D., M.H.P.E., says artificial intelligence (AI) might help augment the services provided by general practitioners and advanced practice nurses, but she thinks AI will only go so far.

“I don't think I see it as fully replacing that human element — that ability to listen to somebody, to examine them and then make clinical decisions from there,” Boyer said in an interview prior to the 2024 ATS International Conference in San Diego. “Maybe I'm old school, but I feel like that human element still needs to be there to a large extent.”

Boyer, a pediatric pulmonologist specializing in lung transplantation at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, served as chair of the committee that planned the agenda of the conference, which started yesterday but kicks into high gear this afternoon.

AI is the topic of the conference’s first keynote session tomorrow morning, and Boyer is introducing the speakers.Other AI topics on the conference’s program include the use of ChatGPT in research and AI in radiological interpretation of certain disease states such as Interstitial lung disease.