At the 132nd Congress of the German Society for Internal Medicine, doctors spoke about the use of artificial intelligence, which goes far beyond pure pattern recognition. AI agents are intended to actively relieve doctors and nursing staff of routine tasks and thus counteract the shortage of skilled workers and increasing bureaucratization. At the same time, modern technology enables more differentiated diagnostics, the experts emphasized.
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Artificial intelligence in everyday hospital life is developing from an advisory to an actively acting system. “We are taking the step of ‘not just advice, but also action’,” explained Prof. Jens Kleesiek, director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at the University Hospital Essen, at a press conference for the congress.
In view of the shortage of skilled workers and administrative overload, the use of such technologies is unavoidable: “We can no longer guarantee the quality of care and security of supply if we do not use additional tools.”
As a specific example, Kleesiek cited “agentic AI,” which autonomously coordinates complex processes such as patient discharge or warns staff if an allergy has not been correctly noted in the file. At the same time, he warned that despite all the technological support, “common sense should not be ignored.” The danger is to blindly trust in the technology, similar to a navigation system, follow the driver and drive “somewhere into the river or into a field”. The guiding principle must therefore be clear, says Kleesiek: “We treat patients and not data.”
Reassessment through data: BMI under scrutiny
Advancing digitalization is also leading to a reassessment of established medical parameters. The complexity of metabolic research goes far back into evolutionary history, as Prof. Michael Stumvoll from the University Hospital Leipzig explained. Stumvoll recalled that adipose tissue was a crucial development in surviving periods of starvation and fueling the energy-intensive human brain. “No other animal can afford to put a quarter of its basal metabolic rate (…) into the brain,” says Stumvoll. This evolutionary advantage becomes a challenge in today’s time of abundance.
In particular, he described the body mass index (BMI) as a “very rough measure” that “does not do justice to the biology of individual fat distribution and the nature of the fat.” To illustrate this, he made a comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in his prime as a bodybuilder “also had a BMI of 30,” but this was due to muscle mass. With modern algorithms you can now recognize patterns “really beyond BMI”. The benefit is enormous: “We know exactly that she will get sick, and then and soon, and stupidly sick.”
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For Congress President Prof. Dagmar Führer-Sakel it is clear that “old concepts are no longer enough”. Digital change is an opportunity to shift the focus from “repair medicine” to prevention. The aim is medicine that is designed to be “participatory, (…) individual and clearly networked” and in which the growing flood of data serves as a resource for more precise and personalized treatment.
(mack)
