Hello, good morning, everyone. I'm Prateek Sharma and along with Mike Wallace, it's our pleasure to chair once again the ASGE Global AI Summit. You know, I truly am blessed to have a number of extremely smart and smarter people on the task force. Several of them are here. I mean, I'll start here in the front. Cadman is here. Shravanthi is in the back. Seth and Tyler will be joining virtually as well. Alessandro Repicci is unable to join us for this summit. So these are the members. And Mike, of course, was one of the earlier members of our task force as well. So a lot of that you will be seeing today is truly the efforts of the task force which have gone behind it. And I specifically, besides Mike as the co-director, wanted to acknowledge Shravanthi's contribution in setting up a lot of these sessions and presentations on this. So if you look at, let's see, is it advancing? Yes. So if you look at the evolution of innovation and you can go right back to the 1990s. And then, of course, just wanted to highlight how a lot of these things got changed with Google, Facebook, and then for convenience, you know, Uber having us, I think all of us took Ubers from the airport. And now we are to the realm of having AI within the healthcare arena, specifically for gastroenterology. So I think that's the progress and innovation that we have made. Of course, this wouldn't be also possible if it wasn't for all the investments which are going in artificial intelligence. So this tells you the story from both sides. Number one is that there is an unmet need in the healthcare sector. But on the other hand, you have all these private investments also happening. So it is a very nice sort of a combination that we are here today in which we do have the financial funding for a lot of these initiatives which are happening. And this is, again, not just specific to gastroenterology or to healthcare, but just to AI in general. Now, this is digital health. Now, when you talk about digital health, it's obviously separate from artificial intelligence, but all your EHRs, all your variables, et cetera, that's what, you know, that comprises of this. And you can see what's been happening to the total venture funding in digital health. And all of us are familiar with our EPICS or Cerners, whatever you're using. Every day there is a new algorithm which is being added to it. And that's all part of this AI revolution that we are facing. And this is extremely important for us. But taking a step back is if you look at this, and it tells you where is healthcare within the advancement in AI, you can see that we are sort of in the bottom when it comes to advancement in AI within healthcare in general. And you can see if we talk about GI, it probably will follow behind cardiology, behind radiology. You'll be hearing about radiology today as well. And so I think we do have a significant potential to improve. And it's, I think, conferences like this, education, partnership with industry, and also specifically through societies like the ASGE that we can actually improve this. And so this is the current state that we are in today. There are different types of how we can be looking at artificial intelligence and how it helps us. Patient-oriented, clinician-centered, I mean, and we're usually in the center always, which we think is, okay, how can this help us or how can it help me? But we forget the other two sides of the slide, which are shown right here, which I think are equally important, if not more important in several areas. And I think we will be hearing about that today as well. So I'm just giving you a snapshot of what's to come today. Then, if we look at data, we are so focused on endoscopy that we are just thinking of one data point, which is the image. But we have to look at other data points as well. And ultimately, for us to advance this field in gastroenterology, we have to have this complete view of the patient. So whether it's data through, you know, scribes or through notes that the nurses are taking during a clinic visit, and then through NLP that can be transferred into structured data, or it's through a Fitbit in which you can monitor the patient's symptoms all throughout a 24-hour time period for diseases such as IBD or for IBS. I mean, I think that's going to be the key as we move into the future. And these are, again, all the main areas of focus for redefining healthcare. And I've mentioned a few of them already, and we will be hearing about each one of these during the day. So just broaden your horizon. It's not just about looking at a poll, but it's beyond that. And I think that's why we are here together, is to look at all of this thing in a nutshell. And then these are different areas which are from the administrative side, is how can we use AI for a number of these concepts? You know, specifically in this era where we're having shortages of nurses, how can we utilize this for it? For management, for no-show predictions, for estimation of medical bills, prior authorization, how much time do our nurses spend in calling insurance companies for prior authorization? I mean, I think these are all areas where we can be helped with artificial intelligence. And I think this is some of the areas we'll be hearing about as the day progresses. Now let's focus on colonoscopy or endoscopy, which we do on a daily basis. And I think this is what drives us in gastroenterology and is a major issue for all of us. And it's not just the ADR, but it's improving the other quality. Is it feasible? How do we measure that additional data that will be generated by us? And of course, it's not all really great. There are a lot of unintended consequences with any of these things that we will be doing in the future. So I think it's important to look at this. So when you look at what we majorly focus on, which is CAD or computer-aided detection or computer vision in endoscopy, you can see that this is going to be a major change as we do it. There are always concerns, and this is not going to replace the physician or the endoscopist anytime. So I think, you know, for folks who are online or here, I mean, I think we hear a lot of angst from community physicians that, okay, well, maybe I don't want to adopt this because it's going to take my job away. And Chuck will just hopefully will discuss it. The radiologist had a huge issue about this is that will AI take away the jobs of radiologists or not? And it's not that it will take away the jobs of radiologists. It will take away the jobs of radiologists who are not using AI versus the ones who are using AI. So I think that's a little bit of a shift in our thinking that we need to do as we start looking at all of these. But there are all these challenges, which I've listed here about data, about our uncertainty, efficiency, because whenever you hear AI, you think it's all gold, right? Everything's going to be perfect. You walk in tomorrow, the work's going to be done, but it's not that simple. And there are all these different areas, which I think need to be addressed. And several of our experts today will be going over and providing us data or information about that. And here's the big thing is if you look at the left is clinical implementation. And I think a couple of talks on that today, we're saying, okay, it's here. The algorithm has been developed and there's ongoing research. And why are we not seeing the impact, right? I mean, that's a challenge and that's where implementation comes in because you can have all the products, but if they don't see it at the end of the day for your patients, I think it's all going to be meaningless. So I think that's how we need to do that. So what's ahead that you'll be hearing today is a number of things about how can we learn from unlabeled data? What's this collaboration that we need between AI and endoscopists? How can we use AI for quality control? And I think Shyam's going to be talking about that. And then of course, beyond what humans can actually see and recognize. So with that, I just wanted to welcome all of you to the fourth Global GI AI Summit hosted by the ASGE. And again, on behalf of Mike Wallace and the entire AI task force, I wish that, I hope that you will enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you very much.

ASGE Global AI Summit

Prateek Sharma

AI in healthcare

financial funding

patient data