Laying the foundation for Artificial Intelligence in health care

Medicine is often described as both an art and a science. One might think that the "science of medicine" should be fairly straightforward, driven by findings from clinical studies and evidence-based protocols derived from such findings. Yet numerous studies show that a startlingly high percentage of medical treatment is not in conformance with evidence-based guidelines. Some of this has to do with information overload – given that 90% of the world's data has been generated over the last two years, most clinicians on the front lines of healthcare simply aren't aware of some key evidence-based recommendations as they may pertain to the situation at hand. Even before the recent proliferation of data, a number of studies have found that it takes 17 years for advances from medical research to become incorporated into our standards of care. Assuming that there is a knowable answer to each and every medical question, we must also consider the "art of medicine."