Can AI outperform doctors?

Medical artificial intelligence is said to be one of the most promising health innovations thanks to its wide range of applications. From reading CT scans to early detection of disease, the use of AI in the healthcare industry can provide expert-level accuracy while delivering a more comprehensive and cheaper patient care. Researches have stated that these medical AI, with the capability to do 80% of what doctors can, will pervade 90% of the hospitals. That being said, can AI outperform medical doctors?
So, what are the potential AI-driven technologies that are reshaping healthcare? In other words, how far has medical AI got? In 2017, a robot in the United Kingdom, developed by Babylon Health scored 81% on “a representative sample set of questions” from the MRCGP exam, the final written test on diagnostics used to certify doctors (Source). Some of the most innovative applications of medical AI lie in the field of medical imaging. For example, IBM’s Watson can recommend the same treatments as oncologists for 99% of the cancer diagnoses tested. Watson even found a treatment that doctors have missed in 30% of these cases, as these treatments were based on very new clinical trials or research papers that the doctors had not read (Source) . In addition, an AI model developed by the researchers from Google Health and the Imperial College London worked as well as the double-reading systems of two doctors, and even outperformed six radiologists in reading mammograms (Source). These developments are expected to save around US$350 -- 400 billions dollars in the healthcare sector, according to the McKinsey&Company analysis.

 Source: McKinsey analysis



The graphs above pretty much sums up the reason why AI is extremely beneficial: Effective care delivery, enhanced clinical productivity, variability and waste reduction, consumer-focused sites of care, as well as other miscellaneous benefits. With these extra funding in hands, there could be more hospitals built, therefore creating more jobs for medical workers and closing  the gaps of medical accessibility around the country.
On the other hand, when patients receive bad news regarding their health, would they want the doctors and nurses, instead of chatbots or machines, to be there for them? While these algorithms may have extreme productivity, it lacks human emotions and empathy. Researches have also shown that humans do not trust AI when it comes to their health problems, as people believe our situations are always unique. Hence, we tend to not want don’t want the standardized and inflexible care provided by AI.
Source: Accenture 2018

All in all, AI innovations are not meant to replace human doctors, but rather offers an opportunity to reshape this industry. AI-driven applications are only made to assist, support, and improve doctor's performance. 












Comments

  1. It may be that eventually AI does take over what doctors do currently, but it could be that doctors' purpose will shift from dealing with the diagnosis and treatment to more of a role in counseling. This would help diagnosis health issues more accurately, yet still provide the human interaction piece that patients desire.

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    1. I agree. In many cases, people are looking for a medical professional who will listen to what they have to say, as well as provide meaningful feedback and generally have a conversation and put the patients at ease, since people do get nervous when it comes to treatment. I don't know if A.I. can replace human doctors when it comes to that, at least for a very long time.

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  2. I think AI is a tool that doctors and medical professionals will end up using more and more, but I don't believe it will fully replace them. Computers are powerful tools, but nothing can replace the human mind...yet.

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  3. I think the AI should be used as a counselling tool rather than fully trusted and given power to take action tool. AI can give the diagnosis and suggest treatment supported with evidence and doctor should have the final say in any treatment or change in diagnosis. One important think that AI can bring to all of us is reduction in cost of health care and it's availability.

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  4. I think that AI will be a great way, as you said, to assist doctors and health care workers, rather than replace them. I was thinking about this during the second debate when talking about AI replacing a large percentage of the work force, that even if AI proves it's ability to perform a surgery or a medical diagnoses, there will still need to be human contact and verification because of the magnitude of the decisions/operations the AI will need to perform. There are human lives at stake and therefore I don't think we as a human race will ever fully trust the lives of humans in the hands of an AI.

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  5. Thinking about this and the debate in class, I think AI will be fully capable of functioning at the same level, or even better than a doctor, but there will have to be a major shift in our comfort with technology before they start replacing human workers. Between a doctor and a patient, there needs to be some sort of trust and the one thing technology could never imitate is human connection.

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    1. I would have to agree with you! Having a human connection with AI would be nearly impossible to do. However, if AI does manage to obtain general intelligence, then would humans really be able to tel the difference between AI-human connections and human-human connections?

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  7. I think that this AI tool can be used as the first-phase screening/testing tool, so that the doctors, in the next phase, are more aware of the current health conditions of the patients without actually examining them. Doing this way, the doctors can reduce the diagnosing time while maintaining/increasing the accuracy, and the patients can also have a chance to talk to their doctors about the 'unique' situations.

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  8. Take COVID as an example, if I get COVID at the beginning season, I don't think an AI could give a nice diagnose. It would just take it as a fever probably and miss the best time for me to do any prevent measures. AI can only give actions to known case in their datasets and will not be able to identify the new disease.

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    1. I don't know if "AI doctors" were to meet these Covid-19 patients in the very beginning, would they realize there's a virus going around sooner than human doctors, since AI is so much better at datas and statistics than human?

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  9. Personally, I think even if AI outperforms doctors, a doctor supervisor will still be needed. The reason is that someone has to be responsible for the patient. A doctor will put his job and reputation to make sure the patient gets the best treatment. However, if an AI makes a mistake, or treat a patient badly, who knows what will happen to it?

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    1. Since AI is only working aside human doctors for now, I don't think it is taking any responsibilities yet. But yeah it would be interesting to see what happens to the AI then, whether it would go to court or something.

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  10. Click-bait topic lol but I agree that the healthcare industry will change with AI advancement. Yet, it's unlikely that doctors and nurses will be pushed aside in favor of robots because it's an industry that relies on a human connection.

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  11. Great article Anh! Doctors today pay heavy insurance costs to protect them in the event that they screw up an operation or fatally mis-diagnose a patient. If AI were to replace doctors then who would assume responsibility should something go wrong?

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    1. Good question and I think that's one reason that humans haven't trust AI yet, because we don't really know who is responsible, the hospital? the developer? or the just machine itself? What do you think?

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  12. It is hard to think about leaving your loved on in the hands of a machine. I agree with what most of the people said in the comments about the industry relying on human connection. However, I also agree with Ehren as to the jobs of the Doctors and nurses might shift to still maintain that human connection, instead of pushing them out. But if AI gets to a point where it can feel, then that is another topic to discuss.

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  13. I read an article about human psychology in regards of patients having a robot diagnosing their symptoms. The results were A.I. made much more accurate predictions than doctors, but still, patients don't give much faith to A.I. algorithms. I think there's still a long way until we can have faith in A.I. regardless of its efficiency.

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