Roger Hartl, MD

And that's something that we're discussing.

I know a lot of institutions have that implemented already.

I think there are pros and cons, but sooner or later, it's going to be common practice, I'm sure.

Yeah, so the cons are obviously you want to make sure that whatever you do is accurate, safe, ethical, right?

So I think those are in general with AI.

So you got to be very, very careful

A good example is writing a manuscript, right?

People discuss the pros and cons, what's ethical, what's not ethical, right?

I think there are ways of using AI to create an outline for a scientific manuscript, for example, to review the literature, to critically review the quality of your own writing and improve that potentially.

But I think you always got to make sure that you check and double check and triple check.

That's the most important part.

But I think that we're going to get better at this.

And eventually, I think it's going to be more and more common practice.

To thrive this year is...

I think that personally in my own practice and I think for spine surgeons in general, what I find the most important part this year

but probably also last year and next year is really communicate with patients, right?

I think at the end of the day, what we provide as a service is try to help patients get through a very, very difficult time in their lives, sometimes with neurological deficit, but frequently with pain.

And that's a very, very unique problem.

There are very few specialties in medicine that really have to deal with the complexity of symptoms that we have to deal with, neurological problems, pain, the psychological impact that that has on patients and their families.

And I think no matter how good the technology is, no matter how much you're using navigation, robotics, biologics, AI, I think at the end of the day, you've got to take the time to communicate with your patients and be available.