The Federation of Spanish Medical Scientific Associations (FACME) has organized the I Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, where experts have reviewed the main challenges of this technology and have advanced the innovations that AI is bringing to the field of medicine. FACME held the event this Tuesday at the Illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid (ICOMEM), with the aim of “to be able to debate, highlight and delve into the most relevant and critical aspects of the use and implementation of AI and digital transformation in Medicine.”
Thus, personalities from the scientific-medical community, experts in the development of AI and bioethics, and representatives of the General Secretariat of Digital Health have analyzed “what the digitalization that should be applied to the health sector should be like to evolve in coherence with the solidarity, equity, universality, quality and contribution to science that is expected of him,” as they have pointed out. The president of FACME, Javier García Alegre celebrated that “what seemed like speculation has become reality. AI tools already cover all areas. However, this technology brings some risks that should not be ignored,” hence the importance of this day, as he explained to Gaceta Médica in an interview.
“FACME represents the interests of all associated scientific societies, which are those that have a recognized medical specialty, and it seems to us that aspects related to artificial intelligence are of shared interest. It is a transversal aspect because artificial intelligence is affecting many of them and it will almost certainly affect all of them, it will affect all of them in some way.” Therefore, García detailed that “it seemed like a good time to share with experts, not only from companies, but also with external experts, aspects related to artificial intelligence, which is already a reality in many fields.”
Regarding the future of AI in the profession, the president of FACME stated that “it is open, we build it from the present.” Thus, he has aimed at training. “We will have to train doctors from this perspective, relying on these tools to improve clinical practice, the safety of diagnoses and improvements in treatments.” Furthermore, he has exemplified these advances with a case: “thanks to an artificial intelligence tool, one million molecules with potential antibiotic capacity have been identified. 90 percent of these molecules were not known or even described. This is a tool that has a transformative power, in reality, of humanity. Of course, medicine and health care are not going to be alien to them.”
Regarding ethical limits, García has stressed that “There are always ethical challenges in any modification of clinical practice and there are some aspects that can affect accessibility, equity of care, the guarantee of confidentiality and an aspect that is crucial in the practice of medicine, which is the relationship doctor-patient, a very special fact. It is about the deposit of trust in a professional and the bond that facilitates decision-making, patient care, therapeutic care, we cannot forget these aspects.” For this reason, he recalled that “the practice of medicine involves human beings, a being that suffers and seeks help from another who recognizes the ability to act in his or her best interest. This is the essence of medicine.”
I Conference on AI in Medicine
Regarding the presentations that have been made this first day specialized in AI, Javier has highlighted that “the possibility of applying tools to routine use depends on the possibility of standardization, the more standardizable a therapeutic diagnostic technique is, the easier and faster It is going to be its practical incorporation into medicine.” Thus, he explained that they will talk about several tools related to imaging, laboratory, diagnosis, patient risk stratification and practical experiences of which some of them “are already available in hospitals.”
Likewise, regarding the celebration of this day, he has shown his intention to “maintain this initiative over time because it has been very well received by all scientific societies, it seems to us to be of great interest to all of them.” In addition, “there are hundreds of registered people who are following the day in streaming. Those who have been working for a long time will be able to explain what they are doing and those who have started in AI will glimpse the paths that they can continue to incorporate tools into clinical practice.” Finally, he concluded by pointing out the importance of finding “a way to train ourselves and train undergraduate students and residents using these tools already in practice, because they are going to be completely taken by it.”
Specialized tables
The conference featured various specialized tables that addressed key aspects of AI in Medicine. In the first table, focused on the future of this technology in the healthcare field, The UPM professor in Biomedical Engineering, Elena Hernando, has stressed the importance of training, which is why she has pointed out that “the tools that help the most are manual language processing, machine learning and generative AI, in relation to helping in writing tasks and handling additional load.” These tools offer “suggestions that the doctor can review or filter,” thus facilitating the analysis of large amounts of data and allowing doctors to better focus on the most relevant problems.
Regarding the challenges of Artificial Intelligence, Hernando stressed that “multidisciplinary collaboration is essential due to the need to understand how it reasons and to interpret many data, in addition to the methodological risks it applies, such as the representativeness of the data set or whether they are insufficient.” He also highlighted the need for “continuous evaluation, like any other medical technology.” The engineer specialized in AI and data and manager at Microsoft, Julián Isla Gómez, has reviewed some of the false myths associated with this technology, such as explainability and precision. “The accuracy of AI is at 91 percent,” he said, highlighting that “they are support tools” and that “humans are not infallible.” Isla has pointed out that “it is not just another technology, it is differential because it approaches the capacity of what differentiates us as humans. It will change jobs to adapt to this new technology.”
Ethical and legal regulation
Another table has focused on the ethical-legal regulation and implementation of new technologies by the Administration. The head of the Cabinet of the General Secretariat of Digital Health, Information and Innovation of the SNS, Lucía Escapa Castro, has reviewed the legislative framework for the use of this technology. She has also welcomed the approval of the European health data regulation EDHS, recalling the right of people to control their health data and has outlined measures planned to prevent its use for illegitimate purposes.
The professor of Law at the University of Comillas and former president of the Bioethics Committee of Spain, Federico de Montalvo Jääskeläinen, has insisted that “the data are no longer ours, they now save lives” and has criticized the lack of ethical willingness to share them. . “There is a moral duty to share data, thanks to them we can develop algorithms,” he stated, advocating its secondary use through a pseudonymized model that protects privacy while allowing research. Regarding ethically acceptable uses, Montalvo has expressed concern about the exclusive dependence on algorithms for decision making. “We will have to learn that the algorithm helps us but that we must follow independent criteria to avoid medicine based on the algorithm.”
Application in scientific societies
The day also included a table on the application of AI by medical and imaging scientific societies. The director of the Sant Pau Radiodiagnosis Service and member of SERAM, Josep Munuera del Cerro, highlighted that AI algorithms “will significantly impact the reduction of time spent doing an MRI, reducing it by up to 70 percent.” Thus, it has underlined the importance of continuous training of professionals and residents, with a particular focus on ethics.
Finally, the head of the section of the Cardiology service at the Princesa de Madrid University Hospital and member of the SEC, Luis Jesús Jiménez Borreguero, explained that AI applied to cardiovascular patients will facilitate “automatic calculations, provide new diagnostic and prognostic methods and allow the analysis of large community databases. “These innovations promise to transform cardiology practice and significantly improve patient care.”
