DUARTE, Calif. — Artificial intelligence is continuing to help further the medical field.

The City of Hope Hospital in Duarte is adopting AI in helping to potentially the lives of many patients.

Dr. Kurt Melstrom is an associate professor of surgery at City of Hope and uses AI to help identify the risk factors for patients following colorectal cancer surgery.

“Then can weigh their options along with us,” Melstrom said. “And we can come with alternatives if we feel the surgery too high risk based off of this score.”

The AI is able to go through the data from tens of thousands of past patients and come up with a risk score for a current patient who might face complications, or even death, following their operation. The patient is given a score between zero and 100 and can determine the next steps they would like to take.

“Based on the patterns, it has detected in thousands of other surgeries that it’s looked at in the past,” said Nasim Eftekhari, executive director of applied AI at City of Hope. “All of these surgeries, and how they ended up having a complication or not, and what are the patterns that lead to a patient having a complication?”

Colorectal cancer death rates are the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the country, and the mortality rate for patients who go through a colorectal surgery is up to 16.4%, according to the National Institute of Health. City of Hope is aiming to help reduce the number of the deaths through AI, and help its physicians make better decisions when it comes to care. Eftekhari would like to see AI being adopted on a wider scale when it comes to health care.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, and I think, she said. “I hope that there will be a revolution coming to health care, using especially the newer technology, like generative AI.”

For Melstrom, the technology is aiding in providing more accurate care to his patients.

“It makes me a better physician,” he said. “I can be much more confident in my decision making, as well as the counseling I provide to patients.”