Hello and thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KPBS.

I'm David Huizar.

We've all heard the term artificial intelligence, as AI has been a hot button issue these days.

And we've certainly heard about A.I.

both positively and negatively.

Basically, the argument here is that artificial intelligence can greatly help the world, possibly even save the world, although some critics say I can also take over the world in a manner of speaking, leaving humans, leaving us obsolete.

A.I.

is already taking over a lot of our jobs in artificial intelligence.

At its simplest is the intelligence of machines and computers, as opposed to the intelligence of we humans.

And A.I.

has been used in several sectors of the workforce, as well as other disciplines.

Now, A.I.

is also beginning to make its presence known in the field of medicine.

To find out more about the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care, we traveled to Chuck Children's Hospital of Orange County in Southern California to meet with a team of doctors there who are leading the way in AI and pediatric care.

A.I.

Artificial intelligence can be a frightening new world for some.

A fear of the unknown, a threat to humanity.

Robots and machines taking over the world.

A world where humans are rendered obsolete and uncertain future.

Where A.I.

systems can possibly cause electronic misinformation, cybersecurity catastrophes, a takeover of things like power plants, information systems, infrastructure, education hubs, hospitals.

However, artificial intelligence can also be an amazing new world for some, where humans and machines co-exist for a better world.

A high tech global collaboration where each helps the other for the best possible results, where life is made easier for all of us.

Where A.I.

helps us find the best solutions.

Artificial intelligence is currently being used in the fields of banking and financial services, travel and hospitality, sales and marketing.

Even agriculture.

And now A.I.

is being used with early success in the health care industry, for example, to help diagnose patients more accurately.

For drug discovery and development.

Improve doctor patient communication.

Electronic medical documents and records.

A.I.

and health care is also helping to improve and interpret X-rays, CAT scans, and MRI's helping with automated surgery.

And many physicians and health care workers believe the emerging technologies of A.I.

are going to eventually revolutionize every health care discipline.

There are legitimate concerns that the uncertainty and the potential threats of A.I.

could result in the loss of privacy and human value as A.I.

continues to develop capacities that exceed human capabilities.

Although these days where health care is concerned, many doctors and patients in the U.S. and throughout the world believe A.I.

is a gift to humanity, to our health.

I was diagnosed at eight years old.

I've been diagnosed for nine years and it's been very nice and I enjoy the people I work with.

Life is finally getting better for teenager Colton Schweitzer.

Medically speaking, Colton was born with serious health problems, resulting in ongoing visits to doctors offices and the emergency room beginning when he was just a few months old.

Physicians were trying to diagnose his confusing and complicated illness.

He was misdiagnosed with everything from RSV, a respiratory virus to blood clots in the abdomen, tumors, repeated MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds and various medications did nothing to identify or improve his condition.

Finally, when Colton was two years old, mom Christine and family hit the road to California in the hopes of finding some sort of treatment for her son.

And that road, well-traveled, led her to the Shock Children's Hospital of Orange County in Southern California to begin a new journey.

Well, the team of doctors here, we needed to go see Dr. Chang because he was the leader with any type of viral myocarditis, which at that point in time is what we kept saying was Colton's major concern.

And we saw Dr. Chang for several years and back going back to when he was an infant, he had genetic testing all along when he was four months of age and everything was fine.

They kept telling me everything's fine.

They were just attributing his heart, his weight, his eyes, all to the viral myocarditis that was caused by the RSV.

And then at age eight, Dr. Chang was like, There's something here.

I know there's something here.

Let's we've got to get to the bottom of this.

There's new intelligence all the time, medical knowledge coming out all the time.

We just have to find how that all comes together and works together.

Eventually, the chart team helped diagnosed Colton with a disease known as Ahlstrom Syndrome.

Ahlstrom Syndrome is an extremely rare and complex genetic disorder that's often associated with a wide variety of symptoms.

Things like vision and hearing loss, childhood obesity, diabetes, heart disease like cardiomyopathy, developmental delays, as well as kidney, lung and deliver issues, much of which Colton has had to some degree or another.

And so when I went home and I started reading about Ahlstrom syndrome, that's when it came to light like this is I knew mom instinct that this is probably what he had.

And so at age eight, after all that, we finally have a diagnosis which leads us to here now.

But he's thriving, doing well.

And now we know it's a rare genetic condition of only 960 people who all have the same genetic condition as I do.

And there's not many people who have it like me.

So Colton actually knows quite a bit.

It is a very rare it's considered an orphan disease.

When he was diagnosed, they were saying like he's one in a million.

And doctors today even said you hit the genetic jackpot because it is so rare.

For Christine, knowing was half the battle, finally knowing exactly what was ailing Colton for so many years without proper treatment.

That's not to say Colton has no challenges with his health today.

Mobility issues.

Sometimes I pay.

I think they're doing great.

And some days I just want to stay home.

And the is not one of those days.

No, I'm feeling okay.

I have no pain.

And I'm actually feeling pretty happy today.

I'd say one of the biggest hurdles.

Day to day basis is just having others treat him like a typical child.

He can do anything any other kids can do just with modifications.

So just exactly how did Christine and Colton get here?

Finally getting the accurate diagnosis that exactly matches where Colton has been suffering from?

Well, according to the Chalk Medical team, a AI and artificial intelligence had something to do with this.

Sometimes the simplest questions have the most complicated answers.

Dr. Anthony Chang is a world renowned pediatric cardiologist.

Dr. Chang is with Children's Hospital of Orange County.

He also founded Shock's Medical Intelligence and Innovation Institute, and he's Sharks Chief intelligence and innovation officer.

Dr. Chang has been working closely with Colton and Christine these past several years.

Help me find the proper diagnosis and the best treatment.

Dr. Chang explains how A.I.

is helping both shark and doctors and hospitals throughout the world.

So artificial intelligence is very simply computers or software doing tasks that usually are performed by humans that require some intelligence.

A.I.

is really starting to make its way into health care after a relatively dormant period.

So the last ten years, I would say it's now showing up in the radiology and cardiology suites, looking at medical images that are augmented with use of artificial intelligence.

It's also good now for helping decision support and decision making process for the clinicians and also very importantly, also being used in operations in the hospital, such as figuring out manpower needs, predicting rushes to the emergency room, and also figuring out how the best do financing tasks in the hospital.

So it's really now becoming a very broad resource use in various sectors in the hospital.

And so we need help from artificial intelligence and other related technologies so that we have an equalizer on our side to help deal with all the problems in health care.

So I'm more optimistic about health care than ever before.

Having been in health care for almost 50 years, and I think when we look at the younger generation of physicians and nurses coming into health care, it's really inspiring for me to be able to work and contribute towards the platform for health care in the future for them and for our future patients as well.

So exactly how does AI contribute to the field of pediatric cardiology and Colton's continued care?

Artificial intelligence helps every field, but I think the way it helps me as a pediatric cardiologist, but I see adults too, is helps me with making sure that the image interpretation is as high level as possible, helps to me, helps me make decisions.

As a matter of fact, I take a laptop out and put the large language model right there next to me, and I use it almost every hour to improve my performance as a clinician in and dealing with patients management and diagnosis.

I think you heard earlier from Colton's family that it took a long time and we were very lucky to come up with that really rare disease diagnosis because the clinicians were just thinking out of the box.

And then we connected all the dots and it happened.

But what if we're able to do that proactively in the future?

So we should be able to take the constellation of things that he was showing and automatically make that diagnosis in the future.

And I see that happening in the very near future, actually.

And then all the operational aspects of the HEART program will be helped by artificial intelligence, because there's a lot of inefficiency in how we communicate and how we set up business aspects of the program.

So I think that will all be helped in the future with artificial intelligence.

And we're going to see the beginning of true precision medicine, where you can have artificial intelligence, make virtual copies of your medical records on your images so that the clinicians can make several different treatment plans and see how it works out.

So that's the beginning of precision medicine.

You're going to have all of the hospitals connected so that we have a health learning system that's based on patients from all over the world, not just here in California.

And then finally, we're going to have the clinicians back in the game of AI in health care, where the clinicians will be able to use these A.I.

tools, particularly nurses, pharmacies, respiratory therapists and clinicians.

Physicians will be able to use these tools like we use our cell phone and help patients in real time.

Ultimately, artificial intelligence has to be in synergy with the human spirit and and wisdom.

I think without that human element, which is a misconception on some people's parts, that this is going to be too artificial or humans will be replaced.

I think it's going to bring out the best in humans.

I think one of the best technologies in health care is more than 100 years old, which is the stethoscope.

And I think that's embodies compassion for patients.

And it gives you the special privilege of being closer to another human being.

So I think when we do artificial intelligence projects and programs to improve patient care, we should think about the human aspect is still the most important single element of our patient care and not artificial intelligence.

So artificial intelligence really is the combination of leveraging machines or computers plus software to perform our functions or tasks that are generally performed by humans.

So it takes that and automates those.

So a human or a person no longer has to perform that function and automated, making their role more efficient, but not necessarily replacing their role.

The role of individuals within an organization, their content expertise is really critical to support and enable A.I.. John Henderson says A.I.

is making a difference in health care.

Henderson is Sharks chief information and digital officer.

He's responsible for helping the hospital find the newest and latest technologies, as well as leveraging existing tech.

So as it relates to Shark, what we're looking at here, from our perspective, we introduce predictive models at the point of care.

So whether it's related to a model that we've developed for readmissions to improve our readmissions rate and understand what we need to do to keep that rate low, it can also relate to things we're doing with our patient access center.

Henderson says that technology improvement began some years ago with simple things that we often take for granted today when we have a doctor's appointment or a hospital visit.

So pre electronic medical record, everything was paper, the charts were paper, everything was handwritten.

So that's a huge difference from today where the electronic medical record is really the core of everything we do as it relates to the physicians, nurses, the pharmacies, laboratory systems, all of those things are completely electronic.

So how you order place orders for patients, whether it's related to their meds, whether it's related to a diagnostic test, all of those things are completely electronic.

Prior to that, everything was paper based and phone based.

You had to call in to the lab to to order a diagnostic test.

And now that's all done to do the computer.

So significant difference.

You also have secure text messaging solutions that are smartphone based prior to smartphones really becoming the standard with the iPhone.

Back in 2006, those things were done through landline phone.

So a tremendous difference in pre technology based solutions and what we're doing today.

Henderson explains that A.I.

is even helping to reduce what the medical field terms doctor burnout.

Burnout is a national issue.

What we're doing and how I can really help with that is really looking at different solutions, natural language processing solutions are ones that we're looking at, are ones that can kind of sift through all of the information that's in an electronic medical record.

Some of the data is unstructured, some of it is discrete.

And today a clinician or physician would have to go through multiple tabs in the electrical electronic medical record to really get a good view of all the things that are happening with the patient.

With some of the solutions today, you can summarize that information into one view, and that really eliminates the need for clinicians and physicians to have to go to multiple tabs to get the same information.

It may seem like a small amount, but if you're seeing 40 patients in a day, that can save you anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes per patient, and that adds up each day in over, over, over a month, especially over a year.

That generates a tremendous amount of savings in time back for the physicians to really focus on the engagement with the patient, but also hopefully to shorten their day.

And yet, with all the advantages I can present, Henderson acknowledges there can be concerns about this brave new world.

Any new technology like there's always going to be risk that you have to understand.

And so the concern is really more so around making sure that it's safe, making sure that we have a really clear use case of how we want to leverage the technology and being able to evaluate it over time and make sure that it is performing in the way in which we expect and also looking for how it's how it's actually determining outcomes for the patient populations that we're targeting because we have a very diverse population of patients and you want to make sure that the outcomes for one population is consistent with the outcomes for a different population.

So as long as you are looking at it and taking a very thorough look and review of the process and the technology, I think you can can mitigate the concerns that that exist.

Colton and Christine say after the health ordeal they've been through, they believe AI is the way of the future for medicine and health care, both as a diagnostic tool and to help lead the way to best treatment modalities.

It'll change because I won't People won't have to wait as long as I did.

I had to wait almost a decade of my life.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is when he was hip, it is okay.

When he was young, I was afraid to go into doctors appointments because I didn't know what news I was going to get or have delivered to me.

It was always you thought you were going in for a routine visit and then they would tell you something else was wrong.

So that was the challenge of it with AI.

Once we had a diagnosis, I could look it up and now I know.

Okay, this is what we're facing.

I was able to get support through other parents and my daughter, I have a daughter who's 20 and sister, and so now she has siblings support too.

So the siblings meet Courtney has support through other persons living with ALS from syndrome.

So I think he's supported too.

So with AI, there's not years that go by that you're wondering what your child might be facing, because most my friends and I are.

We've had to wait 8 to 10 years to know what we have because it's so rare.

So with I almost have to put my body, Do you want me to get you?

I Okay.

You want a tissue?

I'm good.

Okay.

Thank you.

With I just feel like it's open doors.

Parents won't have to go through what we went through, waiting and not knowing.

Dr. Giora Malki is the division chief of Pediatric Cardiology and the co-director of the Chalk Heart Institute.

Dr. Malki says A.I., based upon hospital data, is helping families like Kolton and Christine.

The modules that we created are basically to help educate families when it comes to showing different types of heart problems.

So we encounter congenital heart defects and that's where the heart has a structural abnormality.

And we've learned over the years that it's a lot nicer to be able to show families and to show patients exactly what the defect is and where the abnormalities are.

And we've historically just done that using a pen and a piece of paper and drawing it out ourselves.

While these modules really add another dimension to that education so patients and families can really understand exactly what the normal heart is supposed to do and where the abnormalities are in that specific disease.

So it not only helps to understand the current state, but then it helps to kind of explain what the future plan is in terms of either needing to repair that defect or palliate that type of heart problem.

So we've found that parents and patients can learn in so many different ways.

And it's our goal to be able to educate them in the way that they learn the best.

And so this adds another option of being able to to kind of show parents and show families exactly what's going on with their child.

And what we expect with artificial intelligence is to be able to even take those modules to another level where we can possibly even model what that child's heart like might look like over the next few years or over many, many years.

To really help explain what the prognosis can be for that patient specifically, rather than just giving generalized percentages of potential complications or potential side effects from the disease.

The more we can use the data from artificial intelligence to model that specific patient's heart, the more that family can then help be involved in making what sometimes are really tough decisions for patients, right?

Like, should we do X therapy or should we do Y medication?

We always want to be able to involve our families in making that decision and giving them the most information possible in helping them understand exactly what's going on with their child's heart helps to make those decisions as a team rather than us having to tell a family what we think is best.

And without them being able to be involved in artificial intelligence, said Children's Hospital of Orange County is not just being implemented in the field of pediatric cardiology and related disciplines.

AI is also being used to help find out more about a disorder that affects so many children here in the U.S. and worldwide Autism.

Dr. Sharif Torrejon is a pediatric neurologist at York.

Dr. Torrejon is also part of the innovation group at the hospital.

One of the challenges that happens with autism and autism symptoms is parents often know that something's wrong.

Usually around 14 months, they identify that their child's not developing like other children.

But one of the challenges is that because we have been relying on a lot of research tools and repurposed them for clinical care and relying on specialists like myself, where there's not a lot of specialists, there's a pediatric specialty shortage.

So a lot of that diagnosis happens in a specialty care setting.

And so kind of mixing in long wait times to get in this unclear picture because again, overlaps with lots of other things.

And then these research tools, which we actually know are pretty biased, they're biased against females are biased against nonwhite males.

So we often miss the diagnosis or it comes late.

So in the United States, the average age of diagnosis is over the age of four.

It's actually one of the healthy people 2030 goals is to try and identify children before the age of three and get them into services.

And in fact, in our most recent national survey, that number has been getting worse.

So we're actually getting the kids much later than they could to actually have what we call an optimal outcome, which is ultimately no longer having the the diagnosis of autism.

So you may still have features of autism, but it doesn't affect you in a negative way.

Dr. Torrejon explains how AI helps with that early autism treatment.

So there's a lot of work that's being done in artificial intelligence to actually help kids with autism.

It really starts with the diagnosis.

So that's the key point.

If you can understand these kids in this high dimensional space, if you can what we call phenotype them, which is really characterize everything about them, what we can do is we can actually start getting to personalized medicine.

So if I have, let's say, 40 hours a week of therapy, if I don't understand which therapies I want to invest in, then I may not be getting the sort of the biggest return on that therapy.

And so what we want to do is be able to understand this therapy is going to be best for this child.

So whether that's behavioral or speech or occupational therapy.

The other thing that's really interesting that's happening is artificial intelligence is allowing us to create digital therapies.

So there's a big push for, you know, using things like augmented reality and extended reality to engage kids regardless of their neurodevelopment just to improve socialization.

And interestingly, a recent randomized clinical trial showed improvements equivalent to two years of therapy could be condensed down into like six weeks of therapy using virtual reality, augmented reality type digital therapeutics.

And so there's a huge opportunity for us to leverage artificial intelligence to actually treat kids and do it again in a way that gets rid of some of the biases that are that are happening where you don't have necessarily great accessibility to the therapy providers.

Christine and Colton say being at shock and utilizing artificial intelligence to help with their health care is where they must be today.

So with AI, there's not years that go by that you're wondering what your child might be facing.

Because most of my friends and I, we've had to wait 8 to 10 years to know what we have because it's so rare.

I'm good.

Stop worrying.

I'm sorry.

It doesn't take the place of an actual physician because.

Which I'm happy for.

Exactly.

We need that 1 to 1 with a physician, that compassionate care, that empathy, where I think what helps lead them to the answer.

But it doesn't replace.

It doesn't replace people.

Exactly.

Which I'm happy for.

I hope computers never get like that.

I wouldn't like to be replaced.

Thank you so much to all the good folks at Chalk, a great hospital in Orange County, California.

Now, for more information about our program, just click on Cox dot org and then click.

Contact us to send us your questions, your comments or story ideas so we can hear from you.

Or contact me directly.

David, is our news on next or just go to David is our news on YouTube all one word, David is our news.

Contact me there.

You know, I'll get back with you.

And be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I'm David Huizar.