To prepare for artificial intelligence era, hospitals should focus on having proper electronic medical record (EMR) systems rather than hastening to introduce IBM’s Watsons, an expert said Friday.

Professor Shin Soo-yong_신수용 of Kyung Hee University_경희대 emphasized that hospitals should look into implementing proper EMR systems upon the advent of the AI revolution, instead of trying to introduce rapidly developing, but still incomplete, AI systems. Shin made these and other points during the “Hopital Innovation and Patient Experience (HiPex) 2017” conference held at Myongji Hospital in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.

Professor Shin Soo-yong of Kyung Hee University speaks about hospitals’ future in the era of artificial intelligence, during the “HiPex 2017” conference held at Myongji Hospital in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Friday.

Expressing negative views of hospitals rushing to implement Watsons, Shin said, “I have to question whether we can use Watsons with absolute trust. It seems that hospitals have introduced the technology mainly for publicity reasons. They are promoting Watson to win the competition, especially now that its cost is falling.”

Professor Shin questioned the need for high technology such as Watsons, comparing it to hospitals installing high-cost gamma knives for one or two cancer patients.

Instead, he called for hospitals to implement EMR systems “true to its name,” criticizing statistics that boast the deep penetration of EMR in Korean hospitals. “There are only a handful of hospitals that have introduced actual EMR systems. How can we start the discussion of big data in this situation?” he said.

Information is the foundation for data-based science, which requires good organization, Shin says. To organize the data, the professor stressed the need to make the best use of cloud technology.

“To manage data well in hospitals, we should use the cloud, which eliminates concerns about storage space,” Shin said. “Hospitals worry about security, but what makes them so sure hospitals are better at maintaining security than large companies?”

Emphasizing that hospitals must be realistic when preparing for the era of artificial intelligence, Shin said, “We won’t fall behind just because we don’t implement precision medicine and artificial intelligence right away. It’s important to do what can, and should, be done first.”

kss@docdocdoc.co.kr

<© Korea Biomedical Review, All rights reserved.>