ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to dramatically improve treatment protocols. Why are some physicians wary?
Back in person for the first time since the pandemic cancelled its 2020 in-person conference, this year’s Paris Course on Revascularization (PCR) featured an Innovation Day track of sessions highlighting promising new technologies that, by implication, will likely shape interventional cardiology in the years ahead. And this year, many of the presentations featured technologies informed in one way or another by AI (artificial intelligence).
As with most of the sessions at PCR, there was a practical spin to the AI discussions. In sessions held over several days, speaker after speaker tried to demonstrate how this very future-looking technology can actually help interventionalists in their day-to-day practice. After all, it’s a hallmark of PCR and clinical congresses like it, to try to help physicians deal with those real-world challenges; what differentiates the Innovation Day program is that it is more about novel devices not coming to market for several years than about practice protocols or procedure-based challenges.
That said, the interesting spin of PCR is that even in sessions featuring next-generation technology, the physician presenters, in most cases, tried to describe practical, real-world applications and implications of that technology, even if much of it is in the early stages of development. And there was, without question, an interest—in many cases, an enthusiasm—around AI, especially since the physicians making the presentations often had already begun to incorporate AI in their practices or were participating in the kinds of early trials and investigations that would lead to market-ready adoption of the technology.
