*AI in Healthcare: Implications for Family Medicine and Primary Care DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111498*

Family Medicine practitioners operate between extensive delivery systems practitioners such as mental health, home health, and public health. The familiarity with various healthcare stakeholders will enhance AI performance tools.

Because the amount of data we will manage will only increase, there needs to be a strategy both for the here-and-now and beyond. Without this, Primary Care risks becoming incapacitated, subjugated to metrics, and more prone to burnout. Ultimately, AI should be used to enhance the time we spend with patients and complement the Family Medicine experience. NLP aids computers to comprehend, deduce, and use an individual's vernacular. Moreover, AI may unearth material from prior visits, images, labs, and health data to composite them into the right documents so providers can focus on the human-connection [8]. AI chatbots can replicate human dialog, assist individuals in receiving the optimal care, utilizing advanced technology through patient surveillance between visits and provider consultations [3]. Patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF) may broadcast their weight through internet-enabled scales, have their diuretic doses titrated, or ensure that their worsening symptoms are being examined by their PCP. Patients may be reminded of health maintenance services like breast and colon cancer screening, provided education for shared decision making, create referrals, book appointment, and organize tests that need to be performed [9]. AI may data mine environmental, EMR, claims, and pharmaceutical data and integrate these to identify and treat high risk patients afflicted with asthma, MI's, and opioid overdoses to aid appropriate management. AI may explore massive amount of data, convey measures, close care gaps, and most importantly allow providers to spend more time with patients.

While these tools are fascinating, they are not yet equipped to being put into practice. They necessitate improvement, investigation, and substantiation. Privacy, malpractice, and overtreatment must all be carefully weighed and dealt with. Without consideration of fitting payment models AI will be imperfect to influence healthcare delivery. **Figure 1** provides a guide for Family Medicine providers on how to get better involved in leveraging this technology.


#### **Figure 1.**

*Steps for family physicians to get involved in artificial intelligence research.*

Family physicians pride themselves on the personal relationships they form with their patients. Computers will outdo physicians when it pertains to the performance of complicated undertakings. Nevertheless, creating and upholding strong relationships, recognizing and handling their intricacies, and eliciting and integrating preferences into medical decisions are difficult for technology to replicate. Humans and computers must complement each-other to enable physicians to spend more time with their patients.
