As health systems face pressure to keep pace with a rapidly expanding body of cancer innovation, oncology leaders are turning to AI, increasingly weighing how the technology can support — rather than replace — care teams at every level.
Richard Barakat, MD, is physician-in-chief and executive director of Northwell Cancer Institute, part of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health. He recently joined the “Becker’s Oncology Leadership Podcast” to discuss the health system’s priorities, his strategy around AI and what the next generation of oncology leaders will need to solve.
Here is an excerpt from his conversation:
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How are you navigating AI at Northwell? Whether that’s safety concerns or integrating it into care, if you feel like it’s genuinely changing things or if it’s more hype — what is your mindset around AI right now?
Dr. Richard Barakat: It’s such an important and timely issue. In fact, we hold a cancer conference annually called Frontiers in Cancer. This year, the entire meeting was on AI and cancer.
AI extends to the entire gamut of treatment — everything from early diagnosis, picking up lesions that perhaps the human eye could miss, to clinical trial matching.
There are so many clinical trials available to doctors. The medical literature changes so quickly — how can any one individual practitioner know about every single study out there? Does everyone have the time to look at all the important journals to make sure they’re on top of everything? AI is absolutely going to enhance how we treat patients because we will use AI to make sure that we’re providing the best treatment for patients, and I’ll give you an example.
AI should absolutely be incorporated into tumor boards. The way tumor boards typically work is that the clinicians in the room start talking about, “Well, there was a study published six months ago in this journal which showed that this is the best treatment.” You’re really relying on the memory of the people in the room. What if we took that out of the hands of people sitting in a room and used AI? Then the focus of the tumor board shifts from trying to remember the best treatment to discussing all the studies AI has synthesized and presented. Of course, you’ll need doctors to confirm things or to review things, but the key with AI is we want to make sure that we’re not missing things that could really change the way treatments are presented or proposed.
Finally, there’s a huge explosion of AI in genomics — just trying to understand all of the mutations that are occurring in tumors and the significance of those mutations. We had some really incredible scientists at our conference talking about how AI was being used to understand tumor biology and what mutations are actually driving the cancer, and how these patients can be treated.
AI is going to take on a bigger and bigger role, and it will be a critical role. Nobody’s being replaced. This is a team effort — doctors, nurses, staff and AI all working together to make sure that patients have the best possible outcomes.
Listen to the full conversation here.
At the Becker's Perioperative Summit, taking place September 14–15 in Chicago, perioperative leaders and healthcare executives will focus on improving operating room efficiency, enhancing patient safety, optimizing staffing and driving innovation across surgical services. Apply for complimentary registration now.