The role of artificial intelligence in precision medicine

The essence of practicing medicine has been obtaining as much data about the patient’s health or disease as possible and making decisions based on that. Physicians have had to rely on their experience, judgement, and problem-solving skills while using rudimentary tools and limited resources. With the cultural transformation called digital health, disruptive technologies have started to make advanced methods available not only to medical professionals but also to their patients. These technologies such as genomics, biotechnology, wearable sensors, or artificial intelligence (AI) are gradually leading to three major directions. They have been (1) making patients the point-of-care; (2) created a vast amount of data that require advanced analytics; and (3) made the foundation of precision medicine. Instead of developing treatments for populations and making the same medical decisions based on a few similar physical characteristics among patients, medicine has shifted toward prevention, personalization, and precision. In this shift and cultural transformation, AI is the key technology that can bring this opportunity to everyday practice.