We want the humans in our health-care system doing the things that humans are uniquely suited to do, such as interpreting and counseling, as Tom described.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no Topol said in medicine there is a lack of empathy, which companies and institutions should focus on improving.“We want to restore the humanistic side — the critical component — of what is medicine,” Topol said.We're a student-run organization committed to providing hands-on experience in journalism, digital media and business for the next generation of reporters. If we can find a way to fully reflect those existing contracts from a technical standpoint, we'll be in a good position. These technologies will provide assistance, helping care providers see important signals in massive amounts of data that would otherwise remain hidden. We would just continue to monitor them remotely and be available for any problems.Payne: What Tom just described is a smart health-care system—where the consumption of health care is driven by actual need. Doctors' roles may shift from being data collectors and analyzers to being interpreters and councilors for patients as they try to navigate their health.Payne: That means we need to think about new ways to train physicians and other care providers as these systems come into medical practice. They provide guideposts.Maddox: It's an extension of the Hippocratic oath. There is privacy already inherent in the provider and patient relationship.
And those two things are complementary.Payne: As medicine is practiced now, there are moral, ethical and privacy contracts that already exist between health-care providers and their patients. We've had tools for a long time that identify abnormal rhythms in an EKG, for example.
Scripps Professor of Molecular Medicine Eric Topol gave a talk on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence in Medicine … Now, we have the capacity to analyze much larger and more complex sources of data, such as the entire electronic health record and perhaps even data pulled from daily life, as more people track their sleep patterns or pulse rates with wearable devices, for example.Payne: We think it's important to emphasize that these tools are never going to replace clinicians. As these AI systems slowly emerge, I think we may start to see the roles of physicians changing—in my opinion, in better ways. You can be assured our editors closely monitor every feedback sent and will take appropriate actions.
For example, I might have a patient come and see me every six months. Topol said applications of AI are not limited to images of the retina: AI can interpret all sorts of slides and images that pathologists cannot see or make conclusions.Topol said AI would transform the health and medical field with tasks such as interpreting scans, selecting embryos for in vitro fertilization and predicting death in hospitals.
From a heart-attack risk point of view, there might be a patient who is a smoldering fire, so to speak, and the system prompts me and my team to reach out to that patient for an appointment as soon as possible. The future of AI in health care could include tasks that range from simple to complex—everything from answering the phone to medical record review, population health trending and analytics, therapeutic drug and device design, reading radiology images, making clinical diagnoses and treatment plans, and even talking with patients. In a new Viewpoint article published Dec. 10 in the Payne and Maddox answered questions about AI, including its capabilities and limitations, and how it might change the way doctors practice.Payne: In many ways, we already have very simple forms of AI in the clinic now. “But physicians using AI will soon replace those not using it.”Even now, Topol said that patients often feel rushed during their doctor visits. But at the same time, there are levels of understanding that computers still can't and may never replicate.Maddox: To take a treatment recommendation from an AI, even an excellent recommendation, and decide if it's right for the patient is inherently a human decision-making process.
While there is a sense of great potential in the application of AI in medicine, there are also concerns around the loss of the ‘human touch’ in such an essential and people-focused profession. Some of the best ways to reduce health-care costs and improve health-care outcomes will be to eliminate the care that patients don't need.Right now, the challenges we need to address as we try to bring AI into medical practice include improving the quality of the data that we feed into AI systems, developing ways to evaluate whether an AI system is actually better than standard of care, ensuring patient privacy and making sure not only that AI doesn't disrupt clinical work flow but in fact improves it. Your email address is used
There is a moral and ethical contract that involves not only protecting patient privacy but making sure that information is used responsibly and in order to make the health-care system better. Building systems to analyze data in health care is not the same as building systems that manage logistics when someone orders something online.
Your opinions are important to us. Taking all that together, the AI could identify any patients who are at high risk for cardiac problems. Privacy requires two things: The first is the mechanics of protecting data, and the second is the establishment of trust. What are the patient's preferences?