The Growing Role of AI and Other Technology in Cancer Care: Coral Omene, MD, PhD

There is an increasing role for artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology solutions to improve care delivery and improve access for patients in underserved and rural communities, said Coral Omene, MD, PhD, associate professor, Rutgers Cancer Institute and RWJBarnabas Health.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Is there a role for AI in promoting and helping to facilitate value-based cancer care?

I think AI, more and more we're seeing that used in terms of diagnosis for instance, and prediction models for instance. I think that there is a role for AI in doing that, and more and more the data is coming out about that. You can see if AI can be used to more accurately predict [disease progression] or have predictive measures that we can use to integrate in our care for these patients. That can only help in terms of the value that we give with care.

How can technology be leveraged to improve cancer delivery, particularly those in remote or underserved communities?

When we talk about, how do we make things easier, for instance, for patients in rural areas [and] underserved communities, who may not have access very easily to lots of large cancer centers around them, one of the things is to really leverage the idea of telemedicine, for instance, and be able to streamline a lot of what we do to telehealth.

Yes, we've been doing that more and more, especially since the [COVID-19] pandemic, but to really use that in ways, for instance, in the clinical trials process to be able to get clinical trials to patients where they might not easily be able to do [so, and] be able to talk to them about [trials] by telehealth. Being able to sign consent by telehealth virtually, as opposed to making them come in for yet another trip, transportation-wise, to sign consent. Maybe they went home to think about it. [We should] think about how we can leverage some of these avenues that we use in recent years to better get high-tech care to these patients.