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- Will AI Replace Doctors?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatter is pretty much all you hear nowadays. The technology has been around in healthcare and other industries for some time; however, now it’s gone mainstream and there’s a mad rush to use it, understand it, and capitalize on it.
Here are some thoughts on the subject.
“While LLMs may look and act like humans in terms of output, it is a surface resemblance in the same way a counterfeit looks and feels like the original. It is similar in what it is like, but not in how it is made or reasons.”
Public Market Update: Average Sector Performance
Let’s first take a look at the HealthTech market.
2023 is off to a better start than 2022!
Access to Care companies make it easier for patients to get care, and Decision Support algorithms helps physicians and other healthcare providers treat patients quickly and efficiently. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated growth in these sectors, and despite fluctuations, the technologies are here to stay.
A sector worth keeping an eye on is Hospital Operations, which includes technologies that streamline hospital level care. Without these solutions, hospitals are about as efficient as a non-TSA precheck line at the airport.
Why Hospital Operations technologies matter:
🦠 Pandemic-related shut downs delayed care for patients with chronic conditions, and/or new problems. | ➡️ Patients have required higher level (hospital) care, bigger surgeries, or longer inpatient stays. |
Higher patient volumes plus staffing shortages have overwhelmed hospitals and created costly bottlenecks. Technologies can help ease the burden, and get patients the care they need in a timely fashion.
The Insurance sector is recalibrating due to the Medicaid Redetermination Process. With employment rates up, many folks who lose government insurance may end up gaining private coverage.
On the flip side, Clinical Trials has not been able to shed its red coat. This sector includes (but is not limited to) decentralized clinical trial companies that may be facing post-pandemic shifts in funding, availability of trial participants and the like.
Learn more about each sector by clicking here: |
Articles Worth Reading
Will Doctors Be Replaced By AI?
With AI positioned to take over many occupations, it makes sense to ask if doctors are going to be out of a job sometime soon as well.
In healthcare, specifically, AI is poised to:
🖥️ Take over administrative tasks 🥼 Streamline research by speeding up the drug development process | 🦟 Diagnose major disease ⚕️ Create and analyze personalized medicine treatment plans |
For physicians, AI can not only save time, but also make it simpler to include meaningful lifestyle suggestions into patient care plans - an aspect of patient care that is currently lacking in many fields of medicine.
Of course, an AI program cannot at this time compete with the human touch that doctors bring, and that patients need to make real changes in their health. But AI can help doctors and patients move in the right direction.
So, to answer the question, doctors will not be replaced (yet).
For the full article about AI and lifestyle counseling, click here:
Opinion
A Doctor’s Perspective
Ah yes, AI. The robo-computer technology, smarter than a doctor/lawyer/human, that some fear will replace society one day.
While I don’t think a robot can pass as a human (we’re too nuanced), I do think we’ll have to learn to live with them. In healthcare specifically, there is much discourse about how much AI can or should do.
As a physician, the last thing I need is another technology that hinders my workflows. However, some of the tools out there may actually help enhance patient care and make a doctor’s life a bit more efficient.
How?
🏃♀️ Simplified creation of personalized lifestyle plans for patients
🖥️ Streamlined documentation in electronic medical records (physicians on average spend 45% of their time documenting information)
🏥 Improved backend of hospital operations, making billing and coding more efficient
Anything that saves me time? Sign me up, especially if I can incorporate it seamlessly in my day-to-day routine without causing additional stress.
A critical reminder: No matter how smart a technology is, it’s not human. It cannot reason, show emotion or empathy, or read the room.
In healthcare we have to be careful and cognizant of how we use such technology, how we open up the use for patients, and how we regulate it on a broader scale.
—Sanjana Vig MD,MBA (Anesthesiologist, Peri-operative Expert)