Artificial intelligence is everywhere you turn these days, bleeding well beyond the pages of technology trade publications and blogs to become a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Everyone is talking about AI—and has an opinion on it. It also seems that everyone has a different idea about what AI is, what it is capable of, and why we should either fear or embrace it. Fortunately, there’s plenty of real work and innovation happening around AI to justify the more optimistic views of AI as a tool for good in the world.
Headlines and Hyperbole
That is not to say there will be no growth pains associated with AI, but it doesn’t help to allay fears to describe how one thinks those growth pains will be made manifest in hyperbolic terms for the sake of clicks. For example, Bill Gates recently predicted to Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon that, thanks to AI, specialized knowledge “will become free, commonplace” over the next decade. The comedian Fallon asked, “Will we still need humans?” To which Gates replied, “Not for most things.”
That exchange resulted in the CNBC headline: Bill Gates: Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers—humans won’t be needed ‘for most things.’ Unfortunately, the full context of Gates’ statement was left out as he went on to describe how AI would be used to solve big problems, leaving people free to focus their skills in more productive ways. If AI is used to accelerate research leading to the cure of a fatal disease, doctors would be better able to treat their patients—and more of them.
A Catalyst for Innovation
To that point, and because it was called out specifically in that conversation, artificial intelligence is already proving to be a catalyst for improvement in the healthcare industry. Rather than making humans obsolete, AI in combination with the trend toward digitization and digitalization is helping to make healthcare professionals more efficient by making many common tasks easier. That’s good news for patients because, as the use and value of data grows in the healing arts, the ability to capture, manage, move, and analyze growing volumes of an individual’s health data will help to improve healthcare outcomes.
One example illustrating the influence of AI in healthcare followed Oracle’s 2022 acquisition of Cerner, one of the leading electronic health record (EHR) software companies. Last year Oracle announced that they’d created a new kind of EHR that use the power of AI to automatically accumulate patient information. Whether the information exists on a hospital’s back-end systems, in the cloud, or with a third-party partner, Oracle says its new EHR will find that information and make it available to healthcare professionals via voice prompt and in plain language. That sounds like a great idea, provided organizations don’t become overwhelmed by the responsibilities associated with moving, managing, and securing that data.
Coviant Software is Ready
Here at Coviant Software we’re also exploring ways to use AI in the development and performance of our Diplomat MFT managed file transfer products. We are also tracking how the adoption of AI will affect the way our customers use managed file transfer (MFT) software in their organizations. The world, after all, still runs on files, and that will not change because of AI—except to increase the number and size of files that are created. We have a lot of customers involved in all aspects of the healthcare industry, and one thing we know is that AI will fundamentally change the way those organizations grapple with data, meaning it will also increase the volume of the files that they create, store, and send.
More data. More kinds of data. Compiled faster. Gathered from and delivered to more places—internal resources, business associates, partners, cloud services, government agencies, and more—in greater and growing volume. As the size and volume of files increases, and the speed at which they are created and transferred also increases, the means of automating the management of the transfer process becomes even more important, and with security as a priority. Diplomat MFT already excels in that role and so, as the future we anticipate in healthcare and every other industry rushes toward us, we are ready.