“We have finally designed an assistant for clinical practices”: the multiple uses of AI at Montpellier University Hospital

Professeur David Morquin du CHU de Montpellier. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

Aller plus loin dans l’usage de l’intelligence artificielle dans la santé ? C’est l’objectif que s’est fixé le CHU de Montpellier avec la plateforme d’IA qu’elle a développée avec Dell Technologies.

27,000 verbatim processed in a few hours by GPT4, possibility of detecting a risk of breast cancer 5 years before humans, identification of medical risks in real time, explanatory document provided to patients and families in emergency rooms in different languages ​​summarizing the diagnosis and recommendations…

If artificial intelligence (AI) has already pushed open the doors of the world of health for a good ten years with image processing (x-ray, scanner, etc.), that of language, “it's now“, indicates Professor David Morquin of the Montpellier University Hospital. Before adding: “AI is truly a very important step in the evolution of medicine. If care recommendations issued by AI could still be frightening in 2023, this will no longer be the case in a few years given the results of its uses.”

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Yes to AI in hospitals, but not just any old way

The initial feedback from the CHU on its uses of AI based on the platform developed with Dell Technologies (an open source platform60~/em> with very high computing power, Editor's note) was presented during the meeting that the hospital center organized with the company on artificial intelligence and health, on January 14, in Montpellier. “With AI, we gain in quality of patient care and communication, but also in reliability of care, relevance and anticipation of diagnoses. AI also makes it possible to improve the living conditions of medical staff. We have finally designed an assistant for clinical practices“, the professor of medicine continues.

From there to shouting about a miracle and the cure of all physical ailments, we must however keep a level head. Like all tools, AI has its limits of course. “We must not underestimate the biases, hallucinations and cost of its use“, he notes. Hallucination, you read correctly, AI hallucinates. But still ? In the mass of data being mixed, it can consider information that is inappropriate for the content it is going to produce as relevant and aggregate it without batting an eyelid, misleading the recipients of the document.

To remedy this, several LLM programs (Large language models) capable, among other things, of recognizing and generating text, are used to control each other and thus limit the damage. “We must have a critical approach to AI and its uses in the right place“, warns David Morquin. In other words, AI is not about to take the place of humans and their critical sense.

But between super “assistant” and “facilitator” for research, data management, patient care, the care pathway, professional training and error detection, artificial intelligence and health are married for a long time.

Impact of AI on hospital professions

The impacts of automation and the introduction of artificial intelligence on hospital professions have created training needs for medical staff. It is therefore to support the evolution of practices and professions in hospitals that the Montpellier University Hospital has created the’École de la transformation hospitalière in 2024. "It is in fact a space for continuing education, which is divided into two parts: the first concerns the training of managers, the second the support of professions and professionals impacted by AI. This school has also been designed so that no one is left behind by the wayside in the face of the developments brought by AI“, says Emmanuelle Garnier, deputy director of the Montpellier University Hospital.

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