AI’s potential in spine surgery goes beyond some of the common uses like note taking and triage, Michael Verdon, DO, predicted.
Dr. Verdon, a spine surgeon with Dayton Neurologic Associates in Beavercreek, Ohio, shared his AI outlook during an upcoming episode of “Becker’s Spine and Orthopedic Podcast.”
Note: This is an edited excerpt.
Question: What are some of the other biggest healthcare trends that you’re following lately?
Dr. Michael Verdon: [I’m following] the rise of agentic AI in the clinical space from an office documentation standpoint. There’s quite a few technologies out there that listen to the interaction between the patient and physician and generate notes or potentially orders off of that. It’s primarily for the primary care space, [and] I’m looking to see how that’s going to show up in specialty clinics like spine or orthopedics or cardiac because I think there’s a huge need for those kinds of technologies.
Q: How are you using AI in your practice?
MV: We have been using a tool that we developed to triage patients based on the referral type so we know how to order or schedule their appointments. We’ve been using that in the clinic for about three years now. Patients call to get a referral. My office staff calls, and the software-based package helps question the patients. It’s an algorithmic way to triage patients based on their symptom severity, and it’s a validated tool. My throughput has increased by a factor of two. The other surgical output volume has increased by 10% so it’s really neat. The patients get early treatment with the right person at the right time, kind of thing. It’s been good for the patients and clinical efficiencies.
Q: What other applications for AI and spine care do you think will really take front and center stage in the coming year?
MV: Decision support tools for people. So the whole concept of Open AI as a technology is it scrapes the internet for knowledge to give you suggestions. I think there’s going to be a back end where research tools are going to feed those kinds of machines, and you’re going to have fresh new research data to fuel those large machines to create outputs that are relevant to a patient or to a patient population.
It’s like almost each individual hospital will be its own data hub, which is pretty fascinating. You can treat the patients in your community with the disease states that they’re presenting with based on your own clinical data, and help evolve care for your community, which is really what we need. We need the right treatment for the community. Because a disease process that’s very common in Detroit is not the same as it is in Dubai. They’re just very different based on the way people live and how the diseases are presenting. We’re gonna have tools to be able to help the people at the bedside get the patient what they need as soon as they can.
