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There is a quiet revolution going on in healthcare. Artificial intelligence is changing our understanding of treating disease and helping patients. But according to Amii Fellow and Canada CIFAR AI Chair Amber Simpson, it’s only the beginning. On the latest episode of Approximately Correct, Simpson sat down with hosts Alona Fyshe and Scott Lilwall to explore how machine learning is reshaping medical imaging, cancer detection, and drug development.

"I just loved the idea that we could change the world," Simpson says.

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Much of Simpson’s work focused on combining machine learning methods with medical imaging to spot aggressive cancers, like those affecting the liver and the pancreas. This involves radiomics, using AI to extract hidden data in standard medical scans that can’t be perceived by humans. She explains that some organs, like the liver of the spleen, can work as medical “barometers,” giving advance warning of cancers that would remain undetected by traditional methods. This gives clinicians the opportunity to intervene with targeted therapies before the cancer progresses. 

Simpson is clear that medical AI is not meant to replace human clinicians, who have intuition and experience that can’t be replicated artificially. Rather, it is meant to augment the work they are already doing. “Clinicians that don't know how to use AI are the ones that are going to be disadvantaged, but that it's not going to replace them because there is a special sauce to what humans do clinically,” she says. 

While much of her work is centred on medical imaging, Simpson also discussed other ways that AI is improving healthcare and the experience for both patients and medical professionals. She touched on how medical transcription models are taking administrative work off clinicians and allowing them to more directly connect with patients, and how machine learning is allowing population-wide health research, which could speed up drug discovery and could lead to less reliance on animal testing of pharmaceuticals. 

Listen to the full episode to hear Amber Simpson discuss the future of precision medicine, health data sharing, and how AI is changing the patient experience. 

Approximately Correct: An AI Podcast from Amii is hosted by Alona Fyshe and Scott Lilwall. It is produced by Lynda Vang, with video production by Chris Onciul. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.