Artificial intelligence in orthopaedics: false hope or not? A narrative review along the line of Gartner’s hype cycle

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general, and Machine Learning (ML)-based applications in particular, have the potential to change the scope of healthcare, including orthopaedic surgery. The greatest benefit of ML is in its ability to learn from real-world clinical use and experience, and thereby its capability to improve its own performance. Many successful applications are known in orthopaedics, but have yet to be adopted and evaluated for accuracy and efficacy in patients’ care and doctors’ workflows. The recent hype around AI triggered hope for development of better risk stratification tools to personalize orthopaedics in all subsequent steps of care, from diagnosis to treatment. Computer vision applications for fracture recognition show promising results to support decision-making, overcome bias, process high-volume workloads without fatigue, and hold the promise of even outperforming doctors in certain tasks. In the near future, AI-derived applications are very likely to assist orthopaedic surgeons rather than replace us. ‘If the computer takes over the simple stuff, doctors will have more time again to practice the art of medicine’.76 Cite this article: EFORT Open Rev 2020;5:593-603. DOI: 10.1302/2058-5241.5.190092