Harnessing the Power of AI for Your Podiatry Practice Marketing

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I am Dr. Andrew Schneider. I'm a podiatrist in private practice in Houston, Texas, and I'm the president of the American Academy of Podiatric Practice Management.

How can AI improve practice marketing?
 
AI is here already and it's not going to go anywhere, and we're already using it to great effect with our practice marketing. Where it is right now is being able to help us with our copy, so when we're writing a new blog post or article for our website, we can leverage AI in terms of writing the content. Now, I wouldn't rely on it for the final content, but it certainly is a great first draft, something that you're able to look at and improve on and be able to put your own voice to. But AI will cut the amount of time down to create a new post from probably a couple of hours to probably 30 minutes. So it's being used right now with great effect. When I'm working on my blog posts, I'm working on my articles, and even if I'm working on a video script or something like that, I'll use AI to help me along.

What are the pitfalls of AI in practice marketing?

Well, AI, right now, it's not in its infancy. It's been around for some time, but the thing you have to remember about AI is it's all machine learning. So number one, the content that is produced by AI may or may not be true. AI can make up things, and we have to know that from our degree where the truth lies and where AI might be fudging things a little bit or blurring things a bit. So it's incumbent on us if we're putting material out for the public, whether it be for a video, whether it be an article on our website or an article that goes into a magazine for our peers, it's incumbent on us that we have to make sure that it's true and proper, and the only way to do that is to make sure you read it and edit it. I've caught many errors from AI where they simply make things up, but they say AI lies, machines can't lie. They just make up information that's not true. So what we need to do is not take it for face value. Make sure you edit it, make sure that you make it your own, and make sure that everything that you're putting out into the public is correct and true.

What is the future of AI in podiatry?

I think the future of AI in podiatry is more than we're at now way of helping us write content, but it won't be long before it's embedded in our radiology software, and it's going to be able to take a foot x-ray and compare it to millions of other foot x-rays and produce x-ray report where we're going to have to review and sign to ensure that it's correct. I think that it's going to be a big player in pathology also, where slides will be uploaded and AI is going to be able to catch things that honestly, I think many humans won't be able to. I think it's going to benefit us in that way. Unless you're a radiologist or a pathologist, AI in no way is going to replace podiatry. They don't have hands. We have to put our hands on our patients, so we still have a vital role, but even as a diagnostician, there are already programs out there where if you put it in your symptoms, it will come up with a differential diagnosis that's going to be built into our EHRs that's going to be more robust, and we're going to see a lot more AI in our everyday lives that ultimately is going to make our lives easier.

As long as we embrace it at the right time, we have to not jump the gun before it's ready, and then we have to not go in too late when everyone else is doing it. There's always a sweet spot for new technology, and AI is going to be no.