Explore the vast range of titles available.

Advancements in computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) carry the potential to make significant contributions to health care, particularly in diagnostic specialties such as radiology and pathology. The impact of these technologies on physician stakeholders is the subject of significant speculation. There is however a dearth of information regarding the opinions, enthusiasm, and concerns of the pathology community at large. Here, we report results from a survey of 487 pathologist-respondents practicing in 54 countries, conducted to examine perspectives on AI implementation in clinical practice. Despite limitations, including difficulty with quantifying response bias and verifying identity of respondents to this anonymous and voluntary survey, several interesting findings were uncovered. Overall, respondents carried generally positive attitudes towards AI, with nearly 75% reporting interest or excitement in AI as a diagnostic tool to facilitate improvements in workflow efficiency and quality assurance in pathology. Importantly, even within the more optimistic cohort, a significant number of respondents endorsed concerns about AI, including the potential for job displacement and replacement. Overall, around 80% of respondents predicted the introduction of AI technology in the pathology laboratory within the coming decade. Attempts to identify statistically significant demographic characteristics (e.g., age, sex, type/place of practice) predictive of attitudes towards AI using Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) testing revealed several associations. Important themes which were commented on by respondents included the need for increasing efforts towards physician training and resolving medical-legal implications prior to the generalized implementation of AI in pathology.

As technology for artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has rapidly proliferated, research is needed on how AI should be used in healthcare. Family physicians could deploy AI to predict survival in serious illness which is a particularly difficult task given the breadth of diseases encountered in primary care. Little research exists to inform whether survival estimation tools are welcome in primary care to manage serious illness prognostication. To address this gap, we elicited the perspectives of family medicine residents on the potential use of AI to help them predict survival (i.e., time expected) for their patients with serious illness. Our qualitative study draws on semi-structured interview data from 18 family medicine residents in Canada. We used a pragmatic framework to conduct our analysis, employing principles of constructivist grounded theory. We identified that family medicine residents were receptive to AI survival estimation for serious illness management, particularly for supporting their delivery of expert advice over a broad range of clinical topics. However, caring for patients with serious illness in primary care involves more than survival estimation, with such a tool having likely only limited applicability to end of life. Summarizing these perspectives, we identified four themes: (1) improving patient care with AI, (2) AI with a grain of salt, (3) patient-driven use of AI, and (4) augmenting, not replacing family physicians. Thus, survival estimation with AI for serious illness has potential clinical value in primary care. In addition to survival, pertinent challenges to address with AI include understanding of expected function, maximizing quality of life, and response to interventions, in addition to quantifying survival time. Future prognostication models should consider use of additional patient-centered outcomes and modifying the outcomes predicted based on prediction timepoints. To successfully deploy these technologies in primary care, additional education and role modelling of technology use is needed.

Spatially distinct areas of tumor biodiversity wreak havoc on current precision medicine strategies. To address this challenge, I developed a pipeline that leverages unsupervised clustering of regional neural network-defined histomorphologic signatures to generate Histomic Atlases of Variation Of Cancers (HAVOC). Using spatially resolved mass-spectrometry-based proteomic and immunohistochemical readouts of characteristically heterogeneous glioma specimens, I demonstrated how these personalized atlases of histomic variation capture regional tumoral populations with distinct molecular signatures and biologic programs. I further validated HAVOC on existing spatial DNA copy number and transcriptomic datasets and assigned distinct histologic differences downstream of these genetically distinct subclones. Finally, I extended HAVOC to large tumor resection specimens to demonstrate its utility in automating the topographic organization of cancer biodiversity across multiple centimeters. Together, these findings establish HAVOC as a versatile tool capable of generating small-scale heterogeneity maps and guiding regional deployment of limited molecular resources to relevant and biodiverse tumor niches.