Digital Health, AI and Generative AI in Healthcare : A Concise, Practical Guide for Clinicians

The purpose of this title is to provide a comprehensive foundation for all medical professionals and healthcare-professions students in understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI).  With the advent of generative AI, including the release of Open AI’s ChatGPT in 2022, the world entered a new age of rapid advancements in technology that will significantly change the way clinicians practice medicine, operate healthcare institutions, and conduct research.  At the heart of this penetrating book is the idea that medical schools, medical training programs and other health education institutions must undertake a key role in developing AI literacy for clinicians across the spectrum of medical education that includes all health professions.  Moreover, assert the authors, AI literacy should be incorporated within medical school curriculums as a core competency, as well as into graduate medical education training programs and continuing medical education courses.

This timely and easy-to-read guide offers a wide range of chapters that discuss the core concepts and issues relating to AI in medicine, including a basic understanding of algorithms, machine learning, large language models and natural language processing, the limits and pitfalls of AI, ethical and legal issues, the evolving regulatory landscape around AI, as well as how AI is currently being used in healthcare, to name just several compelling topics.  Additionally, AI technologies will change how medical school curriculums are delivered and how student competencies are assessed, maintain the authors.  Therefore, medical educators will not only need to rethink how and what medical information is conveyed to students during formal instruction, but also must be prepared for AI-powered programs being used to assess students and trainees for the purpose of licensure and board certification.  A timely and soon-to-be gold standard resource in the field, Digital Health, AI, and Generative AI:  A Concise, Practical Guide for Clinicians will be of great interest to medical professionals, trainees, administrators, policymakers, and anyone interested in the fast-evolving intersection of digital technologies and healthcare. 

Terry Adirim, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is a senior executive in the federal government.  She has held several positions including as lead of the Electronic Health Record Modernization effort at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense where she performed the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, leading the Military Health System (MHS) and earlier served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Services Policy and Oversight, a system Chief Medical Officer role. The MHS is a large $50 billion integrated health system composed of 50 hospitals and hundreds of clinics world-wide and the TRICARE Health Plan serving 9.6 million beneficiaries. Previously, Adirim served in other senior health leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and academic medicine. Within academic medicine, Adirim was Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, Professor of Pediatrics and Chair of the Department of Integrated Medical Sciences at the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida where she was responsible for providing leadership over the College of Medicine’s clinical enterprise including providing vision, strategy and oversight of patient care, clinical translational research activities and the FAU Medicine faculty practice. She continued to practice pediatric emergency medicine for over 25 years while serving in these positions.  

 Dr. Adirim maintains academic appointments as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Prevention Medicine and Biostatistics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda Maryland. 

Adirim earned her M.D. with research distinction at the University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine, pediatrics residency training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship training at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC and Primary Care Sports Medicine fellowship training at DeWitt Army Community Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Virginia/Children’s National Medical Center. She has more than 200 journal publications, editorials, oral presentations and invited keynote speaking engagements.