With Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence set to sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the de­liv­ery of health­care ser­vices around the world, the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing strong­ly en­cour­aged to be­gin in­cor­po­rat­ing AI in­to the med­ical cur­ricu­lum.

The ad­vice comes from Dr Wayne Fred­er­ick, for­mer pres­i­dent of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, who was speak­ing at an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in Health Care Re­search con­fer­ence at Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day.

He said this coun­try can­not af­ford to be left be­hind. “I think two things that I do want to em­pha­sise, and that is that the ra­pid­i­ty of this is very sig­nif­i­cant. We should be prepar­ing our sys­tem by chang­ing our med­ical, nurs­ing and al­lied health cur­ric­u­la as quick­ly as we can. I think the more we get that in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the sys­tem is im­por­tant.”

Fredrick said the health au­thor­i­ties, along with ed­u­ca­tors, should be for­mu­lat­ing teach­ing poli­cies with the view of adapt­ing and en­gag­ing AI in the health­care sys­tem.

“I would re­al­ly sug­gest that we al­so need to be chang­ing the sys­tem with­in the schools as well.” From the pri­ma­ry school lev­el, he said, the cur­ricu­lum should re­flect how Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence is go­ing to way stu­dents study.

“And as much as this health­care sys­tem may be start­ing off with a deficit, the abil­i­ty to close that gap quick­ly is about com­mit­ment, it’s about lead­er­ship, and it’s about mak­ing very, very sharp de­ci­sions. You’re not go­ing to get every­thing right; peo­ple are go­ing to be crit­i­cal of some of the things that you try to do, but if you don’t do it, in my opin­ion, you’re go­ing to leave the pop­u­la­tion in a very, very risky place,” Fred­er­ick said.

CEO of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Davlin Thomas added that the use of AI in health­care will dras­ti­cal­ly change out­comes for pa­tients.

“That pos­si­bil­i­ty of im­me­di­ate di­ag­no­sis as a pos­si­bil­i­ty in the fu­ture in the world, and how that will im­pact how we de­liv­er care, is re­al­ly an ex­cit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty. It is a phe­nom­e­non that we will ex­pe­ri­ence in our life­time.”