Artificial Technology

Artificial Technology and Medical Data

Enigma Forensics, Lee Neubecker reviews with Eric Fish, the Federation of State Medical Boards, Senior VP of Legal Services, about the positive impact of artificial technology and machine learning on medical standards and regulations. Find answers how this technology will improve the patient experience in the future.

The transcript of the video follows

Lee Neubecker: Hello, I’m here today with Eric Fish, Senior Vice President of legal services. He’s with the Federation of State Medical Boards and he’s going to be talking to us a little bit today about his organization and how they’re using technology to change how things work.

Eric Fish: Thank you, well the Federation State Medical Boards is the organization that represents the 70 state medical and osteopathic boards who are charged by state law to regulate the practice of medicine within the various states, in that we help build standards for regulation, best practices. We also work with states on our data and other things that are exchanged that really help improve the regulation of medicine for the patient, the end user of medicine.

Lee Neubecker: Eric can you tell us a little bit about how artificial intelligence and machine learning are impacting your organization and membership?

Eric Fish: Well, Lee, we’re actually at a, what I believe to be, a crossroads of cultural, social, and technological change that are really going to change the way that we have to look at regulation for the public benefit. There’s going to be a lot more data on patient/provider interactions. There is also going to be much more data consumed by state regulators to see which of these interactions comply with the standards. One of the things that I see developing out of this A.I. and machine learning is that we’re going to be creating much more data that can be mined as a regulator to see what interactions are good and which interactions are bad.

Lee Neubecker: Eric can you tell us a little bit about how A.I. and machine learning are being implemented to improve transparency?

Eric Fish: Well, one of the things that’s going to occur, I believe, is that as patients and providers start turning to algorithms to help with that continuation of care. Really the people who implement these systems have to prove up to the regulators how these comply, how these algorithms, how other things are going to comply with the standards that are there. Artificial intelligence has been in medicine for a long time. Machine learning is a little bit new, where we’re taking some of the discussions and building a knowledge base that’s then going to be applied to the patient experience and regulation isn’t standing in the way of these things. The regulations are there so that they are done the right way and in comply with the standards and being transparent on that beginning end is a really great step toward complying with regulations and making the regulatory process better.

Lee Neubecker: Great, and so, you told me that your organization runs some services that consumers might want to be aware of. What are those and what are they used for?

Eric Fish: Well, one of the things that we do on behalf of our members is collate all the disciplinary and regulatory actions that are taken against a provider, and we have a service called Doc Info, where a member of the public can go look to see if an action has ever been taken against their physician. We have access to all 900,000 plus licensees and their information, and it’s really a great service and use of data that we’ve collated and given out to the public.

Lee Neubecker: Great. Well thanks for coming on today. I know you’ve brought your colleague, Mike Dugan. Who’s going to talk for a little bit. Thanks again for coming to the show.

Eric Fish: Thanks, thank you.

Lee Neubecker: I have Eric’s colleague, Mike Dugan, he’s the CIO of the organization, and Mike can you tell me a little bit more about some of the things that you’re doing to improve the quality of the data and integrity of the information?

Mike Dugan: Sure, surely, thank you. We, in many ways, we are a data aggregator and this involves a credentialing process for physicians so we pull data from national data sources, we pull data from institutions to verify physicians’ identity as well as their credentials, so the training and process that they have done. Historically, these have been very manual processes, but we’ve implemented technology to add additional data sources and also give us flexibility in how we consume data. Historically, it’s been a very structured we need a file in this format and our technology is still evolving, but we’re working it to give us the flexibility to work with any data source available.

Lee Neubecker: What are the concerns that your members have regarding data breaches and the potential complications resulting from them?

Mike Dugan: Well, I think they worry about that quite a bit and if anyone in technology who deals with identity and has information, if you’re not worried about data breaches then you’re missing the point and perhaps should be in another line of work. So, we are given the trust of the physicians and our member boards that when they give us their data that it will be protected and that it will be safeguarded, and we work very hard to do that, proactively. So I think that in this environment and this day and age, that is an activity and a task that we will do, it will never go away. It will be ongoing and we will have to adapt if there is new ways that are found to hack information, we always will have to improve our data security.

Lee Neubecker: Well thanks a bunch for being on the show. I appreciate you taking time.

Mike Dugan: Okay, thank you, thanks for having us.

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