Couch Conversation with Dr Anthony Chang and Dr Hatim Abdulhussein

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: Thank you. So the past few days I've had the pleasure to attend the AIMed 2022 Global Summit and I've had lots of reflections that I've shared with the community in England on my blog, but it'd be a great opportunity to catch up with Dr Anthony Chang founder of AI Med and Chief Intelligence and Innovation Officer at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) Hospital in the United States and also the Chair of the American Board of Artificial Intelligence and Medicine. So hank you for sitting down with me Anthony.

Dr Anthony Chang: So good to see you again.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: It's been it's been great it's been great to connect. 

Dr Anthony Chang: Yeh too long.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: One of the things that's really touched me in the last few days is the patient stories that we've heard and on the first day we kicked off on a story about Mateo and how a family  member - you know a child - with a congenital heart disease were led to impetus of a family member trying to go and learn about data science and AI and think about how disease can be predicted and then I identified earlier. How important are those patient stories to the implementation of AI and adoption of AI?

Dr Anthony Chang: I think is extremely important. It gives it a personal meaning and a special inspiration and I think - I talked the first day about a sense of urgency. I feel like sometimes we don't have that sense of urgency. We feel like it's something that we can eventually evolve into, but I think that I look at this as patients lives affected and lost without having this resource being implemented when it's appropriate and mature.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: That argument of how we can actually improve and save patients lives through this technology is really important and I'm sure there's a massive impotence for you in terms of the work you did to set up AI Med. Tell us a bit more about this community and how it's developed over the past 5 years.

Dr Anthony Chang: Well it's such a special community to me. I've been fortunate to be the founder of several societies - they're all special in their own way, but this one is different because it involves an age spectrum from the first year medical students - sometimes even high school students - to a senior dean of a medical school or CEO of a hospital or senior clinician in a department. So the age spectrum is tremendous so it's good to have the younger generation right here in in the midst of all of us to continue to inspire us and they're inspired by us as well, and then we have a diversity of sub-specialties involved in Family Practice to Pediatric Cardiology to Orthopedic Surgery, vascular surgeon. Just you know it's virtually every sub-specialty and, more importantly than ever, I see people in the mental health arena coming in which is so rewarding for me to see that.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: And that's fascinating for us in terms of workforce impact. So my next question to you is about the professionalisation and you obviously are involved with chairing the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (ABIM). You have a review course that you you run for clinicians to be able to accredit themselves to to keep their knowledge and skills up to date. How vital has that been in developing a specialist workforce in this area well?

Dr Anthony Chang: I think um the American Board of AI and Medicine , I'm so privileged to chair also has the backing of now close to 100 organisations or companies - as the sort of um democratized source of education when it's sponsored by only one institution or one company then this there's the perception that it may be a little bit biased so we want to have everyone involved and create something special and the proceeds from the books that we recommend for the course go right back into the ABIM in the form of scholarships where needy students or clinicians from abroad that can't afford the course so we are especially this is a pure labour of love to support everyone to to make AI part of their vocabulary.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: And that integration into education and having that structured approach around it, I think this has been invaluable to many people that have been on your courses and said it's something that - you know - it's really interesting for us to learn about as we start to build an educational infrastructure in in England. So it's been really interesting to learn more about that.

Dr Anthony Chang: And based on the need in our team we've developed the advanced course because they're clinicians that say "I'm hungry I want more" and we also now have developed in the at the other end a what we call a primary course so just for anyone in healthcare. If you're a nurse, if you're a pharmacist, if you're a respiratory therapist, if you're a patient, if you're the CEO. and you just not ready for the sort of the more esoterics of the domain but you just want to have a one-day crash course to just get familiar with the territory and know the vocabulary, it's perfectly designed for that larger group of people so we really listen to our attendees about them.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: And that's that's really interesting for us because we've done some work to understand our workforce archetypes and, as we develop our educational strategy around AI so you're right thinking about these different groups and their different needs is vital when you're developing educational material. I want to talk a little bit about AI imaging, and we've seen as a consistent theme throughout this conference. that it's an area where we've seen significant reduction rates in error rates and significant improvements in its ability to to predict certain diseases, pick up illnesses earlier, and we published a report in January that showed how many Ttchnologies are in the in the English system around AI with 34 of those being diagnostics so we're clearly seeing a lot of development in this space. But there are still barriers to to adoption. What lessons have you learned in terms of overcoming some of those barriers and integrating these these AI imaging technologies into practice and into pathways that you work within?

Dr Anthony Chang: Yeah as I talked about during the last couple of days, we have a project a publication bias and then we don't go from publication to practice and I've been pushing really hard to try and get that publication to practice a more important part of that continuum. And I I'm starting to see a little bit of movement but it's going to take everyone coming together and I'm really proud that we've convened with everyone's support a an alliance of centers of AI medicine - 3 are in London (the home of volunteering) so I'm very excited about that - so we have now close to 50 centers we're going to probably put other centers that are waiting to come in on a waiting list because we want to consolidate our thinking and efforts and put together a white paper so that we have at the beginning of I think a set of very meaningful guidelines for all of us for the future it's a kind of a blueprint for AI and healthcare - not just medicine - but in healthcare as well.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: International collaboration is incredible and we're really to really meaningful outcomes. I strongly believe that because this is you know what I've learned in the last few days is all of these challenges that we're experiencing are shared.

Dr Anthony Chang: Yes it's universal.

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: Absolutely absolutely. I really appreciate your time I mean we could talk for ages but but this will be a really useful you know touch base and a reflection for for people that weren't able to make it here and we look forward to having a future AI made in London one let's see.

Dr Anthony Chang: Yes well now we um really was inspired by going to Bletchley Park as I've said to you and sitting uh actually before security came and friendly in a friendly way asked me to leave um I sat in Alan turing's chair for almost an hour and it was a really special moment for me to realize that he would have been proud I think of all of us.

Dr Anthony Chang: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you Anthony

Dr Hatim Abdulhussein: You're welcome, thank you.