Infuse Issue 8 June 2019 | Page 27

William spoke about how AI will
transform our work, particularly when
it comes to prevention, treatment,
research and management. Here’s a
quick synopsis of what the future may
look like for dietitians: • Research – In the era of personalised
• Prevention – Our clients • Management – AI might just give us our
are already gathering data with
their wearables like heart rate,
physical activity and sleep. The
next step is how do we access it
appropriately and make sense of
it in disease prevention. ML is all
about algorithms that evolve as
they obtain more data. They allow
for greater insight from data and
assist with personalising the user
experience.
medicine, we’ll see more personalised
treatments to fit certain genetic profiles.
Genetics is incredibly data heavy so AI reduces
error and allows us to draw conclusions
without being overwhelmed.
time back by streamlining and automating the
routine admin tasks [hello doctor’s letters!] and
inventory management that seem to weigh us
down. Will said it very eloquently: "It’ll stop
wasting time of talented people."
“AI is not sexy stuff like
robots doing surgery, it’s
more about back-end
admin and paperwork.”
• Treatment – Clinicians are
given decision trees to help guide
treatment, instead of trial and
error. Clients will have increasing
expectations; they’ll be asking you
for data to back-up your treatment
plans; we’ll need to access this
data quickly and AI will help us.
It’ll allow us to spend more time
on complex cases and the more
complex work like behaviour
change. And to this, YES there are
loads of apps trying to replace the
dietitian BUT patients still want a
human face to their care.
© Dietitian Connection
Most of the chatter has been about how AI
can help humans but this presentation really
highlighted how humans can help AI. We’ll
need to decide when AI is appropriate, what the
limitations are, how to apply it and provide AI with
our feedback. And at the end of the day, humans
will still be accountable for the end result…
The presentation gives a firm argument
for why dietitians will see opportunities
with AI and how it will increase our
relevance. But we have work to do and we
have to ADAPT.
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Infuse | June 2019