Mayo Clinic taps AI start-up to unlock data

Cerbras Systems, a provider of artificial intelligence computing chips for deep learning applications, will provide both hardware and software development services to Mayo under the deal announced during a presentation at this week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

WHY IT MATTERS

The artificial intelligence created from the anonymized Mayo Clinic data would eventually be made available on the Mayo Clinic Platform, according to Reuters.

The models will leverge generative AI and machine learning to create patient record summaries, analyze imagery or genomic data, according to a prwesentation by Matthew Callstrom, Mayo’s medical director for strategy and chair of its radiology department.

“Mayo Clinic selected Cerebras as its first generative AI collaborator for its large-scale, domain-specific AI expertise to accelerate breakthrough insights for the benefit of patients,” Callstrom said in an announcement on the company’s website.

In order to make the “right” treatment decisions for an individual patient, “You have to weigh all those factors, you have to have a lot of experience,” he said in an interview for the wire’s story.

“That’s where AI comes in to start to augment that.” 

Cerebras called Mayo Clinic an AI leader that finds “new ways to diagnose, predict and cure diseases.”

Andrew Feldman, the company’s CEO, said it was a “multi-million-dollar” agreement over several years but declined to comment on the cost of the partnership for Mayo Clinic, according to Reuters.

THE LARGER TREND

While Mayo Clinic embraces technology to improve patient outcomes, Callstrom and other leaders at the health system said AI will not make decisions and generative AI will not replace doctors.

“Empathy, listening, respect, personal preference. No matter what generative AI quality and accuracy we get to, it is unlikely those generative AI systems will have empathy,” Dr. John Halamka, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform told Healthcare IT News.

Also, because genAI is not transparent or consistent, “it’s not reliable yet,” he noted in August. 

ON THE RECORD

“The state-of-the-art AI models we are developing together will work alongside doctors to help with patient diagnosis, treatment planning and outcome,” Feldman said in the Cerebras announcement.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.