Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Visualization can seem like an unlikely marriage. AI techniques often work as a black box: we cannot know how the AI has reached its conclusion. This can raise uncomfortable questions: think of a medical diagnosis, or the screening of job applicants: if we cannot see inside the black box, we can't know whether the AI made a serious mistake, or reflected our implicit bias. When the AI becomes a veil between us and the data it makes us uncomfortable and it takes our own intuition and insight out of the game. But AI can help us see the data, becoming a crucial help to our own analysis and judgement.

Healthcare organizations across the country are beginning to cash in on early efforts in artificial intelligence and data visualization. First reports on initial efforts to use these advanced technologies show tantalizing potential. Indeed, these clinical applications of AI and data visualization are where most healthcare organizations are concentrating early efforts in using this advanced assistive and predictive technology, according to results of a recent poll of Health Data Management readers. More than half (53 percent) of respondents to the survey say their organizations are using these advanced analytic technologies to improve clinical decision making. That's far and away the leading use of this information technology, but a range of other applications are being implemented, respondents say.