Are Doctors Ready for the AI Change?
Are Doctors Ready for the AI Change?
Change is the root cause of the existence of our civilization. With technology widening its dimension in medical field, many resistances have started bellying up. Artificial Intelligence is now becoming a common term in healthcare. In simple words, Artificial Intelligence is a code, algorithm or a technology designed to mimic human characteristics of reasoning and thinking. It is actually an artificial intelligence that most of us are using in our lives without knowing their existence. AI embedded with other technology has brought paradigm shift in the medical world. AI-powered machines have showed remarkable potential in reducing cognitive load on medical staff, physician, doctor, nurse, health centre and diagnostic centres. Medical Industry generates tremendous amount of data every day. Machine learning, Deep Learning, Big data, IoT have gigantic potential in handling both the structure and unstructured data. Through self-learning, machines are capable of not only in diagnosis of the disease but also in prediction analysis. AI algorithms statistically analyze the patten of data sets and hence predict the treatment.
Health Information Technology (HIT) works with both the Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). With rapid increase in the application of AI in healthcare, it is certainly improving the global health. Very often, we hear how personal health care system that revolutionized every house which has its own set of personal health equipment. iHealthcare or Ideal healthcare augmented with Artificial intelligence helped in proving precision medicine, accuracy in diagnosis and treatment, clinical decision and many more. Many smart health gadgets as Fitbit, Apple, glucometer etc. not only monitors the heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, etc. but also helps in taking preventive measures.
With the proliferation of AI, there is speculation that AI will replace doctors and medical staff in coming future. This statement is itself subjective in terms of its agreement and disagreement. Many believe that though AI has astounding effects in healthcare, yet it has not reached that level of greatness. Experts from healthcare are sending strongest resistance toward AI embedded healthcare workflow. According to them, technology intelligence and human intervention when work together, then it gives the best output. The clinical decision taken by the machine are more accurate as it takes data from the past and resolve the current situation. But we humans works with the current data, analyze the situation and then resolve. Doctors are skeptical about frequently used AI in health industry. The cases where AI shows the discrimination in decision making as majorly it is depended on the input past records available. In case of disease prone to race, region or geographical area, AI is unable to pinned the connection between patient health and their other components. People in health sector are also aware of the fact that AI also posses many drawbacks in healthcare. Whether it is cybersecurity threats, high cost of AI implementation or black box problem of Artificial Intelligence are some listed impediments in near future.
With this fact of some realization that we are ahead towards the sci-fi phase, yet we have not reached the phase where all the basic diagnosis and medical decision making is carried out by the machines.
Written By:
Poonam Abraham Lakra
Assistant Professor
Department of MCA
Patna Women’s College (Autonomous)
