Artificial Intelligence Will Make Healthcare More Human
https://medium.com/@drmikesamy/artificial-intelligence-will-make-healthcare-more-human-d80ccf712b74
Doctors are valued for our ability to use a combination of logic, memorised knowledge and communication skills to perform three main functions. The first is to diagnose a medical condition, the second is to treat it. The third, and most important function is to communicate information to another human being with empathy, in a way that’s tailored to their ability to understand, and in a way which makes them feel cared for. It’s a huge part of the healing process. With the ever increasing costs of ever-more advanced medical breakthroughs and technologies, as well as aging populations resulting in stressed out doctors stretched ever thinner, the tendency is for doctors to concentrate on the diagnosing and treating. The emotional, concerned, human aspect of treating disease is neglected, but this function is the only one even the most advanced artificial intelligence is unlikely to ever genuinely perform.
Medicine has long been considered an art, with “clinical acumen” the major skill of a doctor. He or she will generally spend time learning the relevant science and anatomy of the human body and honing their skills through apprenticeship and experience treating many patients. But doctors are human and the workings of the human body are complex, and without reigning in our egos and making way for objective scientific evidence, we risk sliding down the slippery slope of illusory correlation. We unconsciously forget when a treatment hasn’t worked and get excited when it appears it has. Over time, great “experience” is developed where our biased cerebral database overwhelmingly remembers the successful outcomes.