Artificial Intelligence and NLP (Natural Language Processing) technologies are causing consternation among cancer registrars who are nervous about being displaced. Is there a possibility of A.I. taking the jobs of CTR’s?

The answer is no, not really. Victor Brunka, Sales Manager at Artificial Intelligence In Medicine, explains. “Layoffs won’t happen—there is too much demand for CTR’s, and reporting requirements keep increasing, faster than NLP is adopted. Registrars were concerned when we introduced E-Path Reporter’s automated casefinding 22 years ago. Some have moved from casefinding to abstracting to catch up with backlogs.”

Gayle Clutter, RT, CTR is the Coordinator of ECN (E-Path Community Network). ECN is a free association that presents webinars sever times a year and sponsors a Lunch & Learn event during the annual NCRA conference.

Gayle says, “We have heard fears regarding the replacement of registrars by machines. Personally, I think sometimes CTR’s are a little hesitant to embrace new technologies and voicing this fear is a way of avoiding it. I have to remind them that it’s the way of the future and AVOIDING it is what will see CTR’s replaced, not by computers, but by those (such as RNs) that will employ these new technologies.”

Check out this article about perhaps the most vocal A.I. concern: George Cernile vs Elon Musk