Artificial Intelligence for Pathologists Is Not Near--It Is Here: Description of a Prototype That Can Transform How We Practice Pathology Tomorrow.

CONTEXT: Pathologists' daily tasks consist of both the professional interpretation of slides and the secretarial tasks of translating these interpretations into final pathology reports, the latter of which is a time-consuming endeavor for most pathologists.
OBJECTIVE: To describe an artificial intelligence that performs secretarial tasks, designated as Secretary-Mimicking Artificial Intelligence (SMILE).
DESIGN: The underling implementation of SMILE is a collection of computer programs that work in concert to "listen to" the voice commands and to "watch for" the changes of windows caused by slide bar code scanning; SMILE responds to these inputs by acting upon PowerPath Client windows (Sunquest Information Systems, Tucson, Arizona) and its Microsoft Word (Microsoft, Redmond, Washington) Add-In window, eventuating in the reports being typed and finalized. Secretary-Mimicking Artificial Intelligence also communicates relevant information to the pathologist via the computer speakers and message box on the screen.
RESULTS: Secretary-Mimicking Artificial Intelligence performs many secretarial tasks intelligently and semiautonomously, with rapidity and consistency, thus enabling pathologists to focus on slide interpretation, which results in a marked increase in productivity, decrease in errors, and reduction of stress in daily practice. Secretary-Mimicking Artificial Intelligence undergoes encounter-based learning continually, resulting in a continuous improvement in its knowledge-based intelligence.
CONCLUSIONS: Artificial intelligence for pathologists is both feasible and powerful. The future widespread use of artificial intelligence in our profession is certainly going to transform how we practice pathology.