From Clinic to Clinical Trials: Responsible AI Integration in Oncology

Dr. Paul Hanona and Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla discuss how to safely and smartly integrate AI into the clinical workflow and tap its potential to improve patient-centered care, drug development, and access to clinical trials. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Paul Hanona: Hello, I'm Dr. Paul Hanona, your guest host of the ASCO Daily News Podcast today. I am a medical oncologist as well as a content creator @DoctorDiscover, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, the chief of hematology and oncology at St. Luke's University Health Network. Dr. Bonilla is also the co-founder and chief medical officer at Massive Bio, an AI-driven platform that matches patients with clinical trials and novel therapies. Dr. Loaiza-Bonilla will share his unique perspective on the potential of artificial intelligence to advance precision oncology, especially through clinical trials and research, and other key advancements in AI that are transforming the oncology field. Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of the episode. Dr. Bonilla, it's great to be speaking with you today. Thanks for being here. Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Hanona. Paul, it's always great to have a conversation. Looking forward to a great one today. Dr. Paul Hanona: Absolutely. Let's just jump right into it. Let's talk about the way that we see AI being embedded in our clinical workflow as oncologists. What are some practical ways to use AI? Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla: To me, responsible AI integration in oncology is one of those that's focused on one principle to me, which is clinical purpose is first, instead of the algorithm or whatever technology we're going to be using. If we look at the best models in the world, they're really irrelevant unless we really solve a real day-to-day challenge, either when we're talking to patients in the clinic or in the infusion chair or making decision support. Currently, what I'm doing the most is focusing on solutions that are saving us time to be more productive and spend more time with our patients. So, for example, we're using ambient AI for appropriate documentation in real time with our patients. We're leveraging certain tools to assess for potential admission or readmission of patients who have certain conditions as well. And it's all about combining the listening of physicians like ourselves who are end users, those who create those algorithms, data scientists, and patient advocates, and even regulators, before they even write any single line of code. I felt that on my own, you know, entrepreneurial aspects, but I think it's an ethos that we should all follow. And I think that AI shouldn't be just bolted on later. We always have to look at workflows and try to look, for example, at clinical trial matching, which is something I'm very passionate about. We need to make sure that first, it's easier to access for patients, that oncologists like myself can go into the interface and be able to pull the data in real time when you really need it, and you don't get all this fatigue alerts. To me, that's the responsible way of doing so. Those are like the opportunities, right? So, the challenge is how we can make this happen in a meaningful way – we're just not reacting to like a black box suggestion or something that we have no idea why it came up to be. So, in terms of success – and I can tell you probably two stories of things that we know we're seeing successful – we all work closely with radiation oncologists, right? So, there are now these tools, for example, of automated contouring in radiation oncology, and some of these solutions were brought up in different meetings, including the last ASCO meeting. But overall, we know that transformer-based segmentation tools; transformer is just the specific architecture of the machine learning algorithm that has been able to dramatically reduce the time for colleagues to spend allotting targets for radiation oncology. So, comparing the target