Douglas Flora, Executive Medical Director of Yung Family Cancer Center at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, President-Elect of the Association of Cancer Care Centers, and Editor in Chief of AI in Precision Oncology, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article he and his colleagues co-authored, adding:
“One of the great joys in my professional life right now is collaborating with brilliant people at the top of their game—and Nikhil Thaker is certainly one of those. My favorite coauthor!
Our latest paper asks a fundamental question: What if scientific publishing itself needs to be reimagined for the AI era?
The problem is real. Over 1.1 million cancer-related papers have been published in the last decade. Clinicians spend 25–35% of their time sifting through literature. 69% of healthcare providers report burnout. The current model—static PDFs written for human eyes only—simply doesn’t scale.
Our proposal: redesign oncology publications to be natively readable by AI systems. That means structured metadata, semantic annotations, standardized terminologies, and interoperability with formats like HL7 FHIR and BioC. The vision is for articles to be accessible via an API—where an algorithm (or an LLM plugin) can query across publications and surface exactly what a clinician needs during a tumor board or at the point of care.
But we’re not just cheerleading AI. We dig into the hard stuff: How peer review must evolve (AI pre-screening, ‘AI auditors,’ AI ethics editors). Why FAIR data principles matter more than ever. The real risks of hallucinations and algorithmic bias—and the validation frameworks we’ll need to address them. And the incentive structures required to make any of this happen, including new metrics like an ‘AI-readability index.’
The goal isn’t to replace human judgment. It’s about getting the right knowledge to the right clinician at the right moment—and maybe giving us all a little breathing room.
Isaac Kohane—this touches on so many themes from our recent Fireside Chat. (Transcripts and recordings coming soon, right, Sage and Kevin Davies?)”
Title: The Future of Scientific Publishing in Oncology: Content Designed for Artificial Intelligence Ingestion
Authors: Nikhil G. Thaker, Neena Shetty, Saadia Kazmi, Ivan L’Official-German, Douglas Flora
Read the Full Article on Sage Journals
More posts featuring Douglas Flora.