There’s an interesting piece from the Mayo Clinic Press editors on artificial intelligence in a healthcare setting. Here’s a snippet:
A report from the National Academy of Medicine identified three potential benefits of AI in healthcare: improving outcomes for both patients and clinical teams, lowering healthcare costs, and benefitting population health.
From preventive screenings to diagnosis and treatment, AI is being used throughout the continuum of care today.
I think they’re just scratching the surface. I saw artificial intelligence (mostly pattern recognition rather than generative AI) being used in remarkable ways in radiology several years back. One of the factors I don’t believe they’ve come to terms with yet is that GAI has implications for how good physicians will be selected and trained.
AI is already useful as an adjunct. It’s not really ready to replace that much stuff, especially as it still occasionally makes pretty spectacular mistakes. It has already increased productivity for specialties like radiology and I think it will get even better. That said, before I retired I was part of a group working with GE trying to get their software/AI to help interpret echocardiograms. It was kind of disappointing, especially as it couldn’t compensate for the technique used in obtaining views. It will probably get better.
It will surely affect training. People shouldn’t need to endlessly memorize but rather learn what to look for and how to utilize AI better. Not sure how you will incorporate AI into emergency situations. Also not clear to me how it will help with selection other than you could use it to change how you test, if it was shown to actually help. Probably take a lot fo time and be costly though it could help with screening.
Steve
That is precisely my view. Add that human physicians need to be able to communicate with other human beings better.
People in every job and profession could communicate better. My observation over my last 5-10 years in practice was that there was a lot fo emphasis on communication and I often received letters from families commending my young docs on the level of care and communication they provided. There were still areas, like surgery, where they were still less concerned about talking with people, though even there is was vastly improved.
I would note that communicating better almost always takes time and there is also pressure to cut costs. With the new docs I pretty commonly had to tell them they couldn’t spend an hour commiserating with family while there was a pt coding in the ICU. You need to communicate well and fast, which will always leave some patients unhappy. (I also read all of the complaint letters.) In written communications AI can help a lot you can just tell it to write something nice and make it sound like you care.
Steve