AI Agents Provide Powerful Assistance for Clinical Decision Making in Cancer Treatment
Rohit Mahajan
We have written a lot on these pages about how Agentic AI is transforming healthcare from patient compliance and diagnostic standpoint. New research is now showing the role that AI Agents can play in helping doctor with clinical decisions, in this case specifically regarding treatment plans for cancer patients.
Researchers at the Else Kröner Fresenius Center (EKFZ) for Digital Health at TUD Dresden University of Technology, in collaboration with partners from Germany, the UK, and the USA, have developed and validated an autonomous AI Agent capable of supporting clinical decision-making in oncology. The findings were published in the journal Nature Cancer. In the future, AI agents could assist healthcare professionals in navigating complex medical data and supporting informed, personalized treatment decisions for cancer patients.
Clinical decision-making in oncology is challenging and requires the analysis of various data types – from medical imaging and genetic information to patient records and treatment guidelines. To effectively support medical practice, AI models must be capable of processing multimodal data and have reasoning and problem-solving capabilities that resemble those of humans.
o build an autonomous AI agent for precision medicine, the researchers enhanced the large language model GPT-4 with several digital tools – including radiology report generation from MRI and CT scans, medical image analysis, prediction of genetic alterations directly from histopathology slides, and search functions across platforms such as PubMed, Google and OncoKB. To ensure that decisions were grounded in current medical knowledge, the model was given access to around 6,800 documents compiled from official oncology guidelines and clinical resources.
The autonomous AI agents successfully tested on realistic, simulated patient cases. According to the researchers, the AI agent reached correct clinical conclusions in 91% of cases and accurately cited relevant oncology guidelines in over 75% of its responses. Importantly, the use of specialized tools and medical information retrieval significantly improved the model’s performance. As a result, so-called “hallucinations” – seemingly plausible but incorrect statements – were significantly reduced. This improvement is particularly important in the sensitive area of healthcare.
“AI tools are designed to support medical professionals, freeing up valuable time for patient care,” says Dyke Ferber, first author of the publication. “They could help in daily decision-making processes and support doctors to stay updated on the latest treatment recommendations, contributing to the identification of optimal personalized care for cancer patients.”
You can access the full study by clicking on this link.
How BigRio Promotes Innovation in Agent AI
At BigRio, we share Dr Ferber’s belief in the transformative impact Agentic AI is having on healthcare. Yet, we also recognize the challenges ahead and the need for education and training in the responsible implementation and use of these agents and copilots/ tools. To this end, we have launched a Gen AI Center of Excellence and hold ongoing Gen AI Workshops.
Our Gen AI Center of Excellence focuses on working with industry leaders and innovators to create custom tools that safely augment human intellect, allowing people to know more, do more, and create more than ever before.
BigRio’s Gen AI Workshops are designed to help healthcare professionals meet the challenges of Gen AI and Agent AI implementation. We provide customized onsite, in-person healthcare-focused learning and ideation workshops to accelerate your Gen AI journey regardless of your current state of readiness.
We believe that Generative AI will be most powerful when it is used to enhance, not substitute, human knowledge and creativity. BigRio has long been a facilitator and incubator in leveraging AI to improve healthcare delivery and all industries. We have recently been focusing our efforts on supporting startups and developing our own solutions that use GAI and Agent AI to boost productivity and transform core functions and customer service while innovating at top speed.
