Quest CIO Adds Her Perspective at White House AI Summit

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to make our world both healthier and better. To discuss how to harness this technology to benefit both industry and society, Lidia Fonseca, Quest Diagnostics’ Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, joined several dozen representatives from academia, government and industry at a recent White House summit.AI is the development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. At the summit, Lidia spoke about the potential of AI to enhance healthcare quality, including in diagnostic services.“As a healthcare leader, Quest is continually exploring the potential of new technologies to deliver insights that empower better health,” Lidia said. “AI has the potential to help solve some of healthcare’s toughest challenges, including care quality, managing populations, and lowering costs. By coming together at this summit, industry, government, and academia are taking important steps to collaborate to realize the potential of AI to better industry and society.”Lidia represented Quest, the only diagnostic services provider invited to the event. She was joined by leaders from Amazon, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, MIT, Stanford, and Walmart, among others.Quest already uses AI in certain areas to enhance our services. Our collaboration with IBM involves the use of AI/Watson for cancer care. Quest provides genetic sequencing of tumor DNA, and IBM Watson matches identified gene variants with potential therapies or clinical trials, advancing personalized medicine.Quest has also begun to explore the use of AI in other areas, including clinical trials patient recruitment and bioinformatics to glean actionable insights from large quantities of DNA data provided by sequencing tests.