Hospitals, health systems, and other healthcare organizations are flocking to innovative AI, working on a variety of projects and use cases to see how the emerging technology can help them find clinical and ROI. Where is the best finance?
Thankfully, most are cautious to make sure they don’t go too far, too fast.
But as AI technology becomes more and more powerful, a common question needs to be asked: Can artificial intelligence replace doctors?
The answer to this question is almost always no. Most experts say AI will help doctors, not replace them.
Or, as Mayo Clinic Foundation President Dr. John Halamka said, “If your doctor can be replaced by AI, then your doctor should be replaced by AI.”
But Dr. Bruce Darrow, interim chief information and digital officer and chief medical information officer at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, has a more nuanced view.
In some cases, where the clinical accuracy of doctors and AI are nearly identical, some future clinical care may actually shift to AI, he said.
In the ninth part of the Leading Voices in AI series, Darrow has a lot to say about AI in general (part one today) and his own health system (part two tomorrow).
Ask. Why do you think artificial intelligence plays such an important role in healthcare today?
ONE. A lot of that has to do with the “A-ha” moment that happened when ChatGPT was first made available to the public. AI has been around for a while, especially predictive models. But innovative models really attract people’s attention.
Especially when they can use it not in the context of, “Well, I’m going to see the doctor, and the doctor is going to have some Ninja Logic behind the scenes.” But they can use it at home and they can say, “Tell me about my cholesterol medication.”
It will give all the information about cholesterol medications. It’s going to summarize everything for them and it’s going to really create information in a way that’s really tangible for a lot of people. I think since then, we’ve become more interested in AI.
Additionally, in my experience, provider organizations are always looking for something that makes them attractive to patients. So saying something like “We use AI to make sure you get the best care possible, so we give the most accurate diagnosis” can become a differentiator for an organization. position.
Ask. When thinking about AI and healthcare, some people think that AI will replace doctors. Will that ever happen? And why or why not?
ONE. When talking to people about artificial intelligence, I hear some suggest we should instead talk about augmented intelligence because many of the use cases for AI today are not to replace doctors but to replace doctors. Maybe it’s to help doctors be more successful, more accurate, faster, to make their job easier.
In many cases, it is not a replacement. But I think the issue of replacing doctors, in some cases, may just be a matter of how far in advance you look. Today, most AI applications are not to replace doctors but to help doctors do their jobs better.
For example, if you have a radiologist using AI tools to do the same job they always do, looking at radiographs and pointing out areas of disease or lack of disease, to be able to make a diagnosis, that job still exists in.
But AI can make that job easier, faster, can help them prioritize reading a list of 50 different head CTs, see which one needs to be read first because it has the greatest impact on diagnosis. time sensitive. These are things that cannot replace a doctor.
Having said that, over time I can see ways in which many functions of doctors can be replaced by AI, especially in the area of pattern recognition. Let’s say you have a rash on your hands and I give you two options.
I said, “I can make an appointment for you with a dermatologist.” You may have to wait 5 to 10 days for that appointment. By the time you get there, maybe your rash is better, maybe it’s worse, maybe it’s gone. But your doctor will look at it, and they will likely give you an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan with up to 95% accuracy.
Let’s say I say, instead of waiting 5 to 10 days to see a dermatologist, I can give you an app that you can download on your phone and you take a picture of that rash on your hand and it will give you information with a certain level of accuracy.
You can then treat it with over-the-counter hydrocortisone, or you can leave it alone and it will go away on its own, or when you know this is something that will actually benefit from medical care and intervention from your doctor. doctor.
If I told you the accuracy of that was on par with what a doctor would tell you in 5 to 10 days, like 95% accuracy or even higher, then it wouldn’t be a problem. again. Every patient will choose the app. Even if you have close to the level of accuracy that a doctor can achieve, maybe even 85% or 90% accuracy, you may still have the intuition to get there.
I think the longer we look over time, as we look five years, 10 years, 20 years into the future and some of these pattern recognition and prediction models get better, you’ll see some aspects of clinical care move in a direction other than the physician first approach. But I think doctors will be around for a long time to come.
BONUS CONTENT: Click here to watch a video of this interview, in which Dr. Bruce Darrow also discusses patient-facing artificial intelligence, like chatbots, and where he sees this form of AI headlines.
Editor’s note: This is the ninth in a series of articles featuring leading voices in health IT discussing the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. To read the first article about Dr. John Halamka at the Mayo Clinic, click here. To read the second interview with Dr. Aalpen Patel at Geisinger, click here. To read the third part, with Meditech’s Helen Waters, click here.
To read the fourth part, with Epic’s Sumit Rana, click here. To read part five, with Dr. Rebecca G. Mishuris of Mass General Brigham, click here. To read part six, with Dr. Melek Somai of Wisconsin’s Froedtert & Medical Network, click here. To read part seven, with Dr. Brian Hasselfeld of Johns Hopkins Medicine, click here. And to read part eight, with Craig Kwiatkowski, senior vice president and CIO at Cedars-Sinai, click here.
The HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum is scheduled to take place September 5-6 in Boston. Learn more and register.
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