Physician’s Weekly recently spoke with Kaelee Brockway, PT, DPT, EdD, about the beneficial role AI plays in COPD care plans.
Dr. Brockway: AI can be integrated into telemonitoring systems for COPD to detect patterns used to identify signs of exacerbations or infections earlier than what a clinician might detect. AI can then provide feedback to the person with COPD in response to telemonitoring findings about redirecting the patient away from exacerbation or identifying the triggers that may be responsible for exacerbation.
Teaching patients about managing their COPD can be difficult because there are so many factors to account for. AI can be a guide that is always available where they can ask questions and get answers to help them best manage their condition. But it can also provide real-time feedback on their training, show their progress, and progress their programs as the patient demonstrates the ability to complete parts of training without clinician intervention.
AI is a great tool to teach others, like medical students, healthcare providers, and caregivers, about COPD, as AI can generate case scenarios and teaching materials that can be adjusted to various audiences and levels of medical knowledge to train diagnosis and management strategies.
AI is already detecting breast cancer before it develops. We hope the same AI technology will also be used to detect lung cancer before it develops so intervention can happen early and QOL can be preserved for more people.
Preventing COPD is always the goal, and COPD, in most cases, is fully preventable. AI is going to play a huge role in disease prevention in the future in predicting behavior patterns and determining those who are at greatest risk for developing many chronic diseases. We can then use those findings to target preventative care long before a disease happens.
Clinical interventions for COPD are typically targeted at preventing progression of the disease, but we never really know which interventions will be best for which patient. AI will be used to play out scenarios based on patients’ presentations and needs to determine what interventions they will have more success with. This can play forward into invasive treatments as well, determining which patients will be most successful with resections versus transplants versus gene therapies before choosing such invasive interventions to give the patient their most informed choice and best chance of success.
