Artificial intelligence and inflammatory bowel disease: Where are we going?

Inflammatory bowel diseases, namely ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, are chronic and relapsing conditions that pose a growing burden on healthcare systems worldwide. Because of their complex and partly unknown etiology and pathogenesis, the management of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease can prove challenging not only from a clinical point of view but also for resource optimization. Artificial intelligence, an umbrella term that encompasses any cognitive function developed by machines for learning or problem solving, and its subsets machine learning and deep learning are becoming ever more essential tools with a plethora of applications in most medical specialties. In this regard gastroenterology is no exception, and due to the importance of endoscopy and imaging numerous clinical studies have been gradually highlighting the relevant role that artificial intelligence has in inflammatory bowel diseases as well. The aim of this review was to summarize the most recent evidence on the use of artificial intelligence in inflammatory bowel diseases in various contexts such as diagnosis, follow-up, treatment, prognosis, cancer surveillance, data collection, and analysis. Moreover, insights into the potential further developments in this field and their effects on future clinical practice were discussed.