In this episode of GZERO AI, Taylor Owenhost of the podcast “Machines Like Us,” explores the unexpected role artificial intelligence is playing in the healthcare industry's efforts to bring humanity back in. As doctors get busier and spend less time with patients, AI has been touted as the solution to help them foster human connections.
So if there's one area of our economy and society that really needs change, it's our health care system. No matter where you live in the world, no matter what the financing model for health care is, the health care system is undoubtedly failing you in some way. And at the heart of this is the doctor-patient relationship.
Doctors are getting busier, taking on more and more responsibilities, and spending less time with us, the patients. In the United States, the average doctor consultation is just seven minutes. In South Korea, it's two minutes. And the result is 12 million serious misdiagnoses every year in the United States, 800,000 of which result in death or disability.
“Medicine has become dehumanized,” says cardiologist, medical researcher, and author Eric Topol. But paradoxically, Topol believes AI can make medicine more human. In its most basic form, this means bringing AI into the conversation between patient and doctor. It means that AI can transcribe the conversation and have doctors pay attention to us, rather than typing it into a computer screen. It also broadens the range of capabilities that AI can assist with. This could be taking upcoming appointments, following up on treatment plans, or even more powerfully, helping with the diagnosis itself. Doctors can only see so much about what's going on right now. And AI could have much better visibility. Take radiology scans, for example. Topol says AI can add superhuman eyes to a doctor's capabilities. When a radiology scan is ordered, radiologists are typically told to look for one specific thing, but AI can look for everything, potentially accessing a rich, detailed view of our health history. Retinal scans are another example. AI can detect everything from diabetes to kidney disease and even Alzheimer's just by looking at our eyes.
Another powerful possibility here is future prediction. Medical professionals need to not only diagnose current conditions but also help protect us from potential future conditions. And AI can process vast amounts of data about our bodies, health history, family history, and genetics to help predict which diseases we will be most susceptible to in the future. So, could we potentially use AI to predict diseases like Alzheimer's 20 years before we get them and develop treatments, medical care, and lifestyle adjustment plans accordingly? Yes, it certainly could.
And one thing is clear: this will completely change what it means to be a doctor. Doctors will no longer need to memorize textbooks or rotely repeat terms, as we train them to do today. Instead, we may select doctors for their relationships, emotional intelligence, and empathy. As Topol says, this may ultimately mean a systems shift from treating to curing.
I'm Taylor Owen, thanks for watching.
