In a recent article in JAMA, Derek C. Angus writes about the Hypotension Prediction During Surgery (HYPE) trial, one of the first randomized, controlled trials of an artificial intelligence (AI) intervention. Angus discusses how this type of study provides good evidence for actually using a particular, specific AI intervention--but he highlights the limitations of this type of research, too. Although Angus focuses on an AI intervention for hypotension, the principles he explores are relevant to mental health as well. Mental health apps using AI technology are already being used, despite the current lack of evidence for improved outcomes. Also, ethical concerns have been raised about the use of AI in all medical contexts.

After years of development, machine learning methods have matured enough to be used in clinical medicine. In 2018 the FDA approved software to screen patients for diabetic retinopathy, and the methods are rapidly making their way into other applications for image analysis, natural language processing, EHR data mining, drug discovery, and more. JAMA is proud to be a primary forum for the work of interdisciplinary groups demonstrating the use of machine learning methods for clinical medicine and health care. To understand the work read JAMA's Users' Guide to the Medical Literature How to Read Articles That Use Machine Learning, authored by Google Health scientists, and an accompanying commentary. See also JAMA Network's Health Informatics collection.

Digital imaging in all of its forms is becoming more powerful and more integral to medicine and healthcare. Deep learning can capitalize on all of the patterns that can be extracted from very large datasets and used for interpreting still and moving images, according to Naylor. "Deep learning and related machine-learning methods can also learn from massively greater numbers of images than any human expert, continue learning and adapting over time, mitigate interobserver variability, and facilitate better decision-making and more effective image-guided therapy," he wrote.