The patient experience could change dramatically.
From real estate to e-commerce, artificial intelligence is rapidly expanding across many industries, and healthcare is certainly no exception. Even though the technology still has a lot of room to grow, it has vastly advanced over the last several decades, from the Furby toys that were popular in the early 2000s to the facial recognition features we see on our smartphones today — and some even believe it’s already poised to transform medicine as we know it.
So what would this futuristic scenario look like, exactly? Well, picture yourself in the year 2080 — you go to your local clinic because you’re not feeling well, and an Alexa-like device asks you to share your symptoms. In response, this computer system jots down your personal information, pulls data from your past records, and suggests various test options. After picking one and providing your results, the program then prescribes you some medication to help treat your condition.
“These large language models make it possible to have back-and-forth conversations related to symptoms and daily behaviors,” longevity researcher Nathan Price, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of wellness company Thorne HealthTech, told Katie Couric Media. “They can build out an assessment of what’s happening in a person’s life in a much deeper way than doctors could do before.”
While this may seem like the stuff of science fiction, the reality is that A.I. systems are already being developed to help diagnose various conditions, ranging from heart disease to cancer. Here’s a look at how technology could change healthcare and whether or not it will eventually replace your doctor.
How can A.I. improve healthcare?
Proponents of this new technology believe A.I. is uniquely positioned to help people improve their health by aiding them in making daily changes, such as getting enough sleep and eating healthier. For instance, OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global are jointly funding a customized health coach that will be available as a mobile app. By learning your precise patterns and preferences, the coach will be able to make personalized real-time recommendations, like swapping that afternoon coffee for some water or taking a break for some exercise. While those might sound like small changes, these are the types of behaviors linked to chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
On top of empowering patients to take charge of their health, A.I. could also help doctors deliver precision care by making inroads with data mining. Experts say future software could analyze massive amounts of information and extract patterns from past patients’ health records, including their genetics and symptoms. The system could predict the most effective treatment plan for new patients based on similarities. “The ability to deliver thousands of those actionable possibilities to physicians and to do it in a way that’s relevant for each individual is going to be key,” renowned scientist Lee Hood, Ph.D., told Katie Couric Media.
What’s even more impressive is that this technology could accelerate the development of new forms of drugs by helping researchers more easily understand disease markers and find the best combinations of chemicals. It could also help them find and match potential participants to clinical trials.
How can A.I. help with diagnosing patients?
Another way technology could improve healthcare is by helping doctors make diagnoses. Some software, like Tempus AI, even analyzes lab results. This could really come in handy when it comes to pathology or the study of various diseases. For example, a computer could be given a set of scans from someone carrying a disease, and the software program could then be trained using those images to recognize features that indicate a positive or negative result for that illness in another patient. Dr. Hood added that they might also be able to detect signs of disease that even a trained eye might not spot.
“A.I. has given us an enormous ability to look at pathology slides and interpret them both rapidly and extremely accurately,” said Dr. Hood. “I think in a similar vein, A.I. is going to be able to look at the images of your brain, and as the repertoire of images accumulates in its correlation with the phenotype of each individual, they’ll get more and more accurate in being able to flag very subtle things.”
In addition to picking up on things doctors miss, the tech could also make diagnostics more accurate, including for those with heart problems. The Mayo Clinic’s A.I.-enabled screening tool can be applied to Apple Watch ECG recordings and has been shown to detect left ventricular dysfunction 93 percent of the time. By comparison, a mammogram is accurate 85 percent of the time.
How else could A.I. help?
While not as exciting as enabling personalized care and discovering new drugs, A.I. can also help reduce administrative burdens in healthcare settings by automating tasks such as medical coding, billing, routine inquiries, and other mundane tasks. For instance, NextGen Healthcare’s Ambient Assist notetaking tool listens to conversations between patients and clinicians and then provides summary notes.
Since nurses often handle a lot of these administrative duties, A.I. could especially reduce their workload and free them up to spend more time with patients. Given the ongoing nursing shortage, this could make all the difference in understaffed hospitals. Federal authorities project that there will be a shortage of 78,610 full-time registered nurses by 2025.
Some tech companies are also creating apps to help hospitals coordinate staffing needs. For example, nurses and other healthcare staff can receive notifications and accept or decline shifts from their phones. By giving them more flexibility and control over their schedules, the hope is that fewer nurses will leave the field.
What does A.I. mean for patient-doctor relationships?
Even if evidence shows that A.I. performs just as well — if not better — than doctors in some scenarios, will robots completely eventually replace physicians? Well, not exactly.
Price thinks A.I. works best when used in tandem with doctors. A.I. can indeed perform some tasks well beyond the skill of any human, such as generating text on any topic quickly or assessing huge numbers of variables, but it also isn’t nearly as adaptable as humans.
“An A.I. only knows what it is trained on, so when a large language model like ChatGPT is generating text, that is all that it is doing,” Dr. Price told us. “It doesn’t have any idea of who a patient is, what medicine is, why we would care, or any understanding of physical reality, so A.I. will only answer a question with the knowledge and tools it has been given.”
There are even studies that back up Dr. Price’s theory. For example, a 2020 study published in the European Journal of Radiology found that two radiologists who incorporated an A.I. program’s output into their evaluations performed better diagnostic tests than the software on its own.
Machine systems also lack a fundamental human quality: “Caring and compassion are critical elements in what patients receive from caregivers, and clearly, this will not be replaced by A.I.,” said Dr. Price. He also pointed to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine that found that patients preferred chatbot responses over ones written by physicians and rated them significantly higher for both quality and empathy.
So it’s no surprise that doctors have mixed feelings about using A.I.. According to an American Medical Association survey in January, 41 percent said they were equally excited and concerned about the potential uses of A.I. in health care. “Whatever the future of health care looks like, patients need to know there is a human being on the other end helping guide their course of care,” said AMA president Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, in a statement.
How do Americans feel about A.I.-driven healthcare?
There’s a lot of lingering discomfort with the idea of A.I. being used in medicine. According to a poll last year from the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of people would be uncomfortable if their healthcare provider relied on A.I. to diagnose or recommend treatment options, compared to 39 percent who said they have no issue with it. But these fears are understandable: Dr. Price says A.I.’s limited ability to only answer questions with the knowledge and tools it has been given has led to some major failures early on. For instance, the system once predicted that doctors could massively reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease by having people ingest carcinogens or known cancer-causing substances.
It is true that killing people one way means fewer of them will die another way, which technically makes the A.I.’s suggestion “a correct answer to the query,” said Dr. Price. But he adds an essential caveat: “No human would make such a mistake because of adaptability and a better understanding of much more about the world.”
Still, both Drs. Price and Hood remain optimistic that the public’s attitude toward the use of A.I. in healthcare will change, pointing to the technology’s potentially life-saving efficiencies. They also agree that general fears around AI capabilities are valid — both experts warn that some engines have been “too broadly educated.” In other words, these systems have been given free rein on the internet, and they take in all of the data, including inaccurate or irrelevant information. “For medicine, it’s important to educate the A.I. engine in a way that’s relevant to the information that you have and that you want to decipher,” Hood told us.
Amid these concerns, some countries are adopting some safeguards on the use of technology. In March, the European Union adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act, which bans A.I. applications that threaten peoples’ rights, such as biometric identification systems. However, the U.S. has yet to adopt this kind of measure and instead relies on existing laws and guidelines to regulate the overall use of the technology.
When used responsibly, experts believe A.I.’s ability to provide highly individualized care could change the game when it comes to treating and preventing diseases. Hood estimated that these systems could reduce chronic conditions like diabetes and arthritis by as much as 50 percent.
So while A.I. concerns are justifiable, their promising advances offer some hope not previously thought possible. “For the first time in human history, A.I. has given us the tools that it might take to seriously deal with all these chronic diseases in a way that we can get at their roots and potentially eradicate them,” said Dr. Price.
