Dr. Dhiraj Pangal: “AI Tools For The Modern Surgeon & Scientist”

SDSC’s Data Science Roundtable with Dr. Dhiraj Pangal, neurosurgical resident at Stanford University, explored how modern clinicians, scientists, and data professionals can practically use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve productivity and research. Dr. Pangal likes to think of AI as “an intern who types fast” – helpful but requires careful supervision and verification of its outputs.

He introduced three core principles of AI stewardship, with the first being verification. It is essential that AI outputs are always checked, especially in high-stakes fields like healthcare and research. Secondly, protect sensitive data, where patient information and confidential data should never be entered into public AI systems without appropriate safeguards and de-identification. Thirdly, AI should elevate your work by enhancing quality and efficiency, not replace it by simply automating tasks.

The talk walked through a practical spectrum of tools, including familiar large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for writing support, brainstorming, and general queries, and more specialized tools like Open Evidence help clinicians quickly navigate medical literature and guidelines. Newer AI assisted platforms like Lovable allow users to build websites, create presentations, automate research workflows, and analyze datasets without deep programming knowledge. 

Dr. Pangal showed how AI can reduce friction in everyday tasks and enable more ambitious projects with AI-assisted literature searches, data processing, and clinical case logging. The session encourages professionals to experiment with these tools thoughtfully by amplifying their expertise, yet maintaining rigorous oversight and ethical responsibility.