Doctors and AI, Better Together?
Doctors have nothing to fear from AI. But the rise of AI-assisted medicine leads to important questions about empathy, and data.
By Xische Editorial, October 29, 2019
Source: Rashad Ashur/Shutterstock
There is a great deal of fear about the future of medicine and the role of artificial intelligence (AI). Advances in medical technology have many thinking that doctors will be replaced by artificially intelligent computer programmes and robots. This fear has been partly spurred by several recent articles predicting the AI will soon dominate medicine. It’s not going to be that simple.
Many of these articles glance over a critical fact: the medical profession is built on deeply human relationships. The challenge we are facing globally is how to strike a balance between technology and the human element. Instead of robots replacing doctors, we are more likely to find AI services working alongside medical professionals. The notion of collaboration instead of domination will define the next chapter in medical innovations.
Before we can address the symbiotic relationship between AI and medical professionals, we need to think about the role of empathy. In a long piece for Quartz, the writer Lila MacLellan outlines how medical schools are using technology to increase the level of empathy among the next generation of doctors. “A movement to build more empathetic doctors has already inspired creative programs across the US, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere,” she writes. “In some cases, hospital physicians are invited to seminars on Tibetan Buddhism or theatre training. At many medical schools, doctors in training are donning virtual reality headsets to experience the trials of arthritis, macular degeneration, and other common conditions they’re likely to encounter in their practices.”
The last example is particularly useful when crafting a plan for medical professionals working with artificial intelligence in a more meaningful way. The goal, put simply, is to augment the work of doctors with the best technology that can make their job better. AI-powered algorithms are already able to calculate lab results or create statistical models that empower doctors with better information for their diagnosis. They do this by training on a set of data, rather than being programmed by humans. These AI and machine learning programmes can look at a dataset, learn from it, and make new predictions without any assistance. More data means better results. This frees up doctors to focus on more important aspects of patient care (and even hone their empathy).
Augmenting AI in medicine can also lower costs and thus improve health services in emerging markets. By freeing up overworked doctors while reducing medical errors, the quality of medicine will improve. In countries like China, there are major shortages of doctors and so AI assistance can potentially save thousands of lives.
But there are hidden costs associated with anything using large amounts of data and these points haven’t been fully debated. In order for AI to flourish in medical systems, they require incredible amounts of data.
In this world awash in data, what will happen for patient privacy rights and potential biases in AI-powered medical algorithms? As we have argued in previous pieces, smart regulation that allows the industry to evolve while protecting innovation is needed. Smaller countries with nimble legislation environments such as Estonia and the UAE can take the lead yet again in pioneering smart regulations for AI and medicine.
We are standing at a crossroads in which mainstream opinion concerning changes in medicine are informed more by science fiction than actual facts. At the same time, innovations are taking place without the right oversight to protect the data of millions of people around the world. Instead of focusing on developments that aren’t taking place or might never take place, it is time for private companies and governments to work together and lay a fresh framework for the medical industry moving forward.
Since AI will help empower doctors in emerging markets, this new framework should be global in nature. Diverse countries like the UAE that are deeply involved with the latest technological transformations can serve a major role in these changes. Not only can the advancements be easily put into practice at leading UAE hospitals but UAE-based engineers and programmers can use the country as a Petri dish for testing the latest innovations. People from more than 200 countries call the country home, what could be a better place to train the next generation AI software? Without this type of leadership, the medical industry is destined to develop disjointly and myths about the role of science, medicine and AI will continue to grow. We have the power to help millions, we just need to learn how to use it more efficiently.
