Dr. Nabil Saba and the Future of Oncology

Nabil F. Saba, MD, FACP, is an internationally recognized expert in the treatment of head and neck cancers. He is the director of the Head and Neck Cancer Medical Oncology Program and co-leader of the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Program at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Under Dr. Saba’s leadership, the Winship Cancer Institute Head and Neck team has conducted more interventional trials within NCTN (NCI cooperative groups) than any other team, achieving the highest accruals for the first quarter of 2024.

He sat down with AI.Health team to share insight on the potential impact of artificial intelligence in future oncology.

Q: How often do you leverage AI in your work?

There is strong potential for collaboration with the AI team at Emory to improve our cancer diagnostic capabilities, predict patient outcomes and enhance our understanding of disease biology. This includes, for example, better understanding and predicting immunotherapy success or failure in treating our patients. I look forward to AI becoming integral to our work in head and neck cancers, particularly in screening, patient evaluation and creating algorithms to improve patient management and care.

Q: How do you envision AI impacting the future direction of oncology and your specific focus moving forward?

AI has tremendous potential to completely change the way we address cancer-related issues at many levels. I envision it enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosing and evaluating cancer, as well as helping the speed at which these evaluations are completed. These are two obvious important aspects of AI. However, we must stress that AI’s effectiveness relies on the quality of existing data and is only as good as this data is. Therefore, it depends on how well that data is annotated.

The best data typically comes from prospective clinical trials, whether through National Cancer Institute-cooperative groups or pharmaceutical companies. I cannot stress enough the importance of ensuring that AI technology and AI experts collaborate closely with clinical research experts in oncology to generate reliable data. It is important that partnering with AI health be a priority as this will help generate much needed reliable information that would benefit patient care in the not-too-distant future.

So, the applications are multiple. Diagnosing cancer, predicting the aggressiveness of cancer and patient outcome is something that AI can help with. But also down the line, AI can help create algorithms for the management of oncology patients. This I suspect will take more time yet is certainly within reach given that AI will allow us to look at much larger datasets.

Lastly, there is a potential role for AI in improving access to healthcare because many patients cannot drive five or more hours to a cancer center. An example of a potential application at a simplistic level would be drafting an expert’s a response that would provide a faster and more efficient answer to these patients and will allow them better access to experts in the field.

Q: How does Emory plan to ensure that diverse datasets and patient populations are included in AI efforts?

Emory plays a leading role in ensuring that diverse datasets and patient populations are integrated into AI efforts. Located in Atlanta, a cross-cultural city, Emory cares for patients from different backgrounds who can participate in clinical trials and thereby contribute to diverse datasets. In addition, we are committed to promoting better health access to cancer care.

Having the newly established Empathetic AI for Health Institute puts us on the leading edge of enhancing AI applicability in several aspects of healthcare, particularly in oncology.