Artificial Intelligence (AI) sooner or later will impact all fields including Medicine and Oncology is not an exception. IBM Watson is already on the way to usage. AI affects oncology in several ways; pathology- already deep learning machine detected skin cancers on par with clinician. AI can substantially reduce the waiting period of malignancy diagnosis and triage the specimens better for pathologist confirmation. Also helps in tele-radiology where diagnosis to the remote place can be delivered within hours.

Coming to imaging, its already semi AI in the image reconstruction , what we are using in the recent CT, MRI and PET scans. AI will have major influence in radiology than in any other branch. The recent neural network programme can identify each pixel and gives an accurate possible diagnoses.

AI in clinical practice, with the 24X7 feeding of data to the AI it can better select the patients for clinical trails so that success rate can be improved. Soon the pharma companies going to be implemented. Better patient selection to particular regimen is another exciting area in clinical oncology. No wonder with in few years "the second opinion" from these AI will become a regular thing in the future. EHR linked to AI will reduce the non compliance and possible may reduce regular visits to the hospital including the ER use.

Is every thing about AI is good and positive? The fear of AI is it can learn itself from the data feeding (real concern for us now). EHR feeding to AI poses ethical issues. Applicability and standardization at global level is another issue. Which company AI is going to be better? developing nations already suffering from huge differences in health care service deliveries and AI may worsen the situation (may not be available to certain patients).

Whether we accept it now or not, AI soon going to impact us all in a big way in the all fields of technology.

"The empathy and human touch in oncology is irreplaceable in any techonological advancement era"