Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a game-changer. Not only can this rapidly advancing technology improve the speed and accuracy of disease diagnosis and treatment, it has enormous potential to predict health problems, allowing for far more effective prevention programs that target at-risk populations. Take, for example, children born with congenital heart defects. This fate currently falls to about 40,000 babies born in the U.S. each year, and about 1.35 million newborns worldwide. What causes defective heart structures in the developing embryo is open to debate.

Not only can this rapidly advancing technology improve the speed and accuracy of disease diagnosis and treatment, it has enormous potential to predict health problems, allowing for far more effective prevention programs that target at-risk populations. Dr. Hugo Aerts, Director of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, says, "AI can automate assessments and tasks that humans currently can do but take a lot of time." Aerts notes that relying on "a human making an interpretation of an image--say, a radiologist, a dermatologist, a pathologist --that's where we see enormous breakthroughs being made." But despite these successes and benefits, there is reason to be skeptical about early computer models as stand-alone tools for screening cancers or predicting the onset of other diseases. But AI is undeniably improving the practice of medicine by having computers do what humans cannot – crunching huge amounts of data to expedite diagnosis and treatment.

The short answer is yes – cancer and other health problems too. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a game-changer. Not only can this rapidly advancing technology improve the speed and accuracy of disease diagnosis and treatment, it has enormous potential to predict health problems, allowing for far more effective prevention programs that target at-risk populations. Take, for example, children born with congenital heart defects. This fate currently falls to about 40,000 babies born in the U.S. each year, and about 1.35 million newborns worldwide.