Drs. Douglas Flora and Shaalan Beg discuss the use of artificial intelligence in oncology, its potential to revolutionize cancer care, from early detection to precision medicine, and its limitations in some aspects of care. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Shaalan Beg: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm Dr. Shaalan Beg, your guest host of the podcast today. I'm the vice president of oncology at Science37 and an adjunct associate professor at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.   On today's episode, we'll be discussing the use of artificial intelligence in oncology, its potential to revolutionize cancer care from early detection to precision medicine, and we'll also go over limitations in some aspects of care. I'm joined by Dr. Douglas Flora, the executive medical director of oncology services at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in northern Kentucky, and the founding editor-in-chief of AI in Precision Oncology, the first peer-reviewed, academic medical journal dedicated specifically to advancing the applications of AI in oncology. The journal will launch early next year.   You'll find our full disclosures in the transcript of this episode and disclosures of all guests on the podcast are available at asco.org/DNpod. Doug, it’s great to have you on the podcast today.  Dr. Douglas Flora: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.  Dr. Shaalan Beg: First of all, Doug, congrats on the upcoming launch of the journal. There has been a lot of excitement on the role of AI in oncology and medicine, and also some concern over ethical implications of some of these applications. So, it's great to have you here to address some of these issues. Can you talk about how you got into this space and what motivated you to pursue this endeavor?  Dr. Douglas Flora: I think, Shaalan, I've embraced my inner nerd.  I think that’s pretty obvious. This is right along brand for me, along with my love of tech. And so, I started reading about this maybe 5, 6, 7 years ago, and I was struck by how little I understood and how much was going on in our field, and then really accelerated when I read a book that the brilliant Eric Topol wrote in 2019. I don't know if you've seen it, but everything he writes is brilliant. This was called Deep Medicine, and it touched on how we might embrace these new technologies as they're rapidly accelerating to ultimately make our care more human. And that really resonated with me. You know, I've been in clinical practice for almost 20 years now, and the same treadmill many medical oncologists are on as we run from room to room to room and wish we had more time to spend in the depths of the caves with our patients. And this technology has maybe lit me up again in my now 50-year-old age, say, wow, wouldn't it be great if we could use this stuff to provide softer, better, smarter care?  Dr. Shaalan Beg: When I think about different applications in oncology specifically, my mind goes to precision oncology. There are many challenges in the precision oncology space from the discovery of new targets, from finding people to enroll them on clinical trials, ensuring the right person is started on the right treatment at the right time. And we've been talking a lot about and we've been reading and hearing a lot about how artificial intelligence can affect various aspects of the entire spectrum of precision medicine. And I was hoping that you can help our listeners identify which one of those efforts you find are closest to impacting the care that we deliver for our patients come Monday morning in our clinics and which have the highest clinical impact in terms of maturity.  Dr. Douglas Flora: You know, I think the things that are here today, presently, the products that exist, the industry partners that have validated their instruments, it's in 2 things. One is certainly image recognition, right? Pattern doctors like dermatologists and people that read eye grounds and radiologists are seei