AI Reads Chest X Ray in 1.3 Seconds, St. George’s University President Marios Loukas Says Human Judgement Still Matters

Dr. Marios Loukas, President of St. George’s University and Dean of the School of Medicine, says future doctors must learn to work with faster diagnostic technology without losing empathy, ethics and patient trust.

Artificial intelligence can analyse medical information in seconds, but the growing speed of diagnosis is placing a different responsibility on future doctors: knowing when to rely on technology and when human judgement must lead.
Dr. Marios Loukas, President of St. George’s University and Dean of the School of Medicine, believes medical education must prepare students for both sides of that responsibility as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly present in clinical practice.
AI systems are already being used to identify abnormalities on medical images, assess potential sepsis risk and assist clinicians with information that can support faster decisions.

AI can read a chest X ray in 1.3 seconds. It can flag a sepsis risk before a nurse has even finished charting. It can analyze a dermatology image with incredible accuracy. This is not science fiction, Dr. Loukas said.
The increasing use of such systems is changing what medical students may encounter when they enter clinical practice. Future doctors will need to understand how to interpret technology generated findings, recognise their limitations and determine how those findings should influence individual patient care.

Dr. Loukas said technological capability alone cannot fulfil several responsibilities that remain fundamental to medicine.
AI cannot hold a patient’s hand, he said. It cannot look at a terrified mother and say, I am here with you. It cannot sit with grief, and it cannot translate fear into trust.
The distinction becomes important as hospitals use technology to prioritise urgent scans, identify patients who may require earlier intervention and reduce administrative work.
While algorithms can process large amounts of information and recognise patterns quickly, St. George’s University believes medical training must continue to develop clinical judgement, professionalism, ethical decision making and empathy alongside technological proficiency.

Medicine has always been about more than arriving at the right diagnosis, Dr. Loukas said.
He added that doctors must understand the person behind a diagnosis, listen to individual concerns and help patients make decisions that can have significant consequences for their lives.
At St. George’s University School of Medicine, this approach is being applied to the preparation of students who may eventually practise across different healthcare systems as international medical graduates.
Rather than treating artificial intelligence as competition for physicians, Dr. Loukas sees the technology as a clinical tool that could allow doctors to spend less time on certain administrative and analytical tasks and more time with patients.

The best doctors in the future will not compete with artificial intelligence. They will know how to work alongside it while never losing the compassion, ethics and human connection that patients depend on, he said.
As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into healthcare, the role of medical education is therefore extending beyond teaching students how emerging systems function.
Future physicians will also need to determine when technology should inform a decision, when its findings require further clinical assessment and how to communicate those decisions to patients in a way that preserves confidence and trust

St. George’s University School of Medicine was founded in 1976 and offers a four year Doctor of Medicine programme along with five, six and seven year MD tracks for students entering through different education systems.
Its students and faculty come from more than 150 countries, and the university has a network of more than 75 affiliated hospitals and health centres in the United States and United Kingdom

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