Will Generalist Medical AI Solve Current Limitations in Clinical AI Tools?

Surveys show that although many physicians are aware of clinical AI tools, only a small proportion — between 10% and 30% — has actually used them. Attitudes range from cautious optimism to an outright lack of trust... But excitement does seem to be growing about an approach sometimes called generalist medical AI. These are models trained on massive data sets, much like the models that power ChatGPT and other AI chatbots. After ingesting large quantities of medical images and text, the models can be adapted for many tasks. Whereas currently approved tools serve specific functions, such as detecting lung nodules in a computed tomography (CT) chest scan, these generalist models would act more like a physician, assessing every anomaly in the scan and assimilating it into something like a diagnosis.