Introduction to artificial intelligence in medicine

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was coined by John McCarthy in 1956 during a conference held on this subject. However, the possibility of machines being able to simulate human behavior and actually think was raised earlier by Alan Turing who developed the Turing test in order to differentiate humans from machines. Since then, computational power has grown to the point of instant calculations and the ability evaluate new data, according to previously assessed data, in real time. Today, AI is integrated into our daily lives in many forms, such as personal assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google assistant etc.), automated mass transportation, aviation and computer gaming. More recently, AI has also begun to be incorporated into medicine to improve patient care by speeding up processes and achieving greater accuracy, opening the path to providing better healthcare overall. Radiological images, pathology slides, and patients’ electronic medical records (EMR) are being evaluated by machine learning, aiding in the process of diagnosis and treatment of patients and augmenting physicians’ capabilities. Herein we describe the current status of AI in medicine, the way it is used in the different disciplines and future trends.