How AI Could Change the Future of Medicine

Have you heard about Augsut yet?

August is another AI-based health information platform from India, that I think is taking this concept to the next level:

- It's available for free on WhatsApp.
- It can read and understand your blood test report, basing its answers on your biomarker levels. This adds another level of personalization.
- It checks in on you like a friend would. For example, if you discussed a fever, it will circle back a week later to ask how you're doing, which can be comforting at times.
- It's fun to talk with August and it is empathetic at the same time. Honestly, August has got a personality. :)

Aging is a curable disease

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The Future is HERE!

This video on AI and medicine explained the concepts from an expansive and balanced perspective. It covered the beneficial ways it may help empower physicians without completely overriding their importance and the hierarchy of patient care. The discussion around AI and healthcare often centers around more extreme comparisons and worries, such as AI completely replacing physicians or recklessly endangering patient privacy. While these are valid concerns and possibilities to keep in mind while we watch the progression of AI and its immersion into healthcare, it is equally essential to think about the small-scale impacts and minor considerations, as this is how things will likely begin as AI is slowly integrated into medicine. One example of such a concern that comes to mind is how we are training and teaching AI algorithms to approach medicine and different patient populations. Humans are imperfect and prone to error, misjudgment, bias, and miscalculation. Physicians are also privy to those same imperfections, and there are errors when treating patients, biases, and misdiagnoses that do happen. In some instances, these shortcomings in medicine can be intentional or from a place of ill-intent; most are implicit and simply the result of imperfect human nature. Therefore, if human beings and physicians are the ones teaching the AI, how can we make sure we are not teaching it our own implicit biases, misjudgments, or incorrect approaches to patient care? There have already been examples in which AI incorporated race into its algorithms without being asked to – it began treating race as a factor independently of the input it was given based on other relationship factors it recognized from the humans who inputted the data. This raises further questions of how we monitor this, how do we prevent it from happening, and how do we recognize biases in the AI that we may not even recognize in ourselves? This poses a risk to two critical components of medical ethics -justice (offering equivalent care and access to care to all patients) and maleficence (to do no harm). If medical diagnosis or treatment plans are created based on an error-prone and biased AI algorithm, then patients are not treated equally or given equal consideration. Furthermore, if the algorithms being used are based on incorrect data or calculations, there is a potential for patients to be treated incorrectly and misdiagnosed, resulting in harm. The video offers one answer to this dilemma: maintaining human/physician control over the AI by having physicians oversee the results it is coming up with and allowing physicians to decide if and how they use the AI information. Having a human physician would help to counteract possible risks to justice and non-maleficence. I agree that this would benefit the medical system, promoting the ethical principle of beneficence.

As one who is going into the field of medicine, I think AI's ability to process large amounts of data efficiently and quickly is really promising. but, it is still important to incorporate human judgment and expertise to ensure well-reasoned clinical decisions are made. I agree that AI systems have the potential to greatly benefit the healthcare field, particularly in radiology and medical imaging, by providing timely and accurate diagnoses, significantly increasing efficiency, and ultimately saving lives. However, it is important to maintain human intervention to agree or disagree with AI assessments, minimizing the risk of harm through misdiagnoses or biases. This would directly oppose nonmaleficence and justice, two core ethical principles of medicine. Nonmaleficence refers to the guiding principle of “do no harm”. Justice refers to providing equal quality and access to care for all. It is important to uphold the principle of autonomy, which allows the patient to determine what form of care best aligns with their values and goals. Informed consent remains a crucial ethical consideration, as patients must know AI's role in their care and the potential risks and benefits involved. It is great to allow AI to provide valuable insights but always with overriding human decision-making. The fact that AI can potentially prioritize patients with higher risk could contribute to the efficient distribution of healthcare resources. Still, it could also lead to potential biases that lead to people falling through the cracks. This is why it is necessary to be aware of the potential biases and mitigate them in order to maintain the ethical principle of justice. I agree with the video that AI should be viewed as a tool to aid healthcare professionals in making informed decisions, emphasizing human expertise and compassionate care.

The way that the video presented artificial intelligence was refreshing in the way that it did not put it on a pedestal, rather it was presented as an idea that helps but does not take over the power and the knowledge of doctors as doctors are the ones that have the final say to see if they agree or disagree with the artificial intelligence. It was enlightening how artificial intelligence was being seen and displayed as a triage method to help doctors be able to focus on the correct patients and narrow down what aspect of the patient's health they need to be able to focus more on in the first place. Although there are many things that artificial intelligence can bring to the healthcare system there is still work to improve artificial intelligence as it is not fully ready to be completely relay on just yet. This video made me think if there would be any bias that is demonstrated in artificial intelligence. For example, there is not much research on minorities, therefore artificial intelligence will not have much to base on to make a decision, or if they do make a decision the decision will not be fully targeted at the patient minority population that they are encountering. In addition, the current artificial intelligence can unaware be biased toward some populations more than others. It is also fair to think about the aspect of privacy or the lack of it when artificial intelligence is being used on a patient. It needs to be seen as if there is another person that knows the situation of the patient. This concept is threatening to the idea of patient autonomy when a patient goes to seek health the patient goes in with the idea that the only people involved in their care are the doctor and its staff and not artificial intelligence. This can make the patient feel uneasy as they feel that their information is at risk of being shared with the wrong people. There is a need to help artificial intelligence become discrete with the patient information as there is more security that comes to play to make sure no one can try to hack the patient information from the artificial intelligence.

Prior to watching this video, I naively thought poorly of artificial intelligence in medicine. Upon learning of it, I too, had it in my mind that it was going to replace humans and the much-needed human element, which filled me with dread. Of all the industries where the human element and touch is needed, medicine may be the most important one. However, this video brought up a great and obvious point - artificial intelligence can be a vital component to decreasing patient mortality rates and making the triage process more efficient. If the time it takes for a patient to be admitted to an emergency room and then to treatment can be decreased, the number of lives that could be saved would be tremendous. From an ethical standpoint, using artificial intelligence in this way may be tricky, but when a human being is checking the computer’s work, the possible risks to patient safety are greatly diminished. Actually, it can be argued that utilizing this technology is more ethical than avoiding it. In my opinion, taking advantage of artificial intelligence satisfies the ethical tenet of beneficience. Beneficience is the obligation a healthcare provider has to take actions that result in the “most good”. If having artificial intelligence run through diagnostic imaging in search of a problem - day and night, while healthcare workers are providing hands on care to other patients - then I can’t imagine how this could not serve the best interests of the patient. AI is here to stay, but if it can be harnessed in such a way that is safe, does not replace the integral human element, and can increase patient survival rates, then it will revolutionize medicine forever.

AI has the potential to revolutionize medicine and improve patient outcomes. However, its implementation must be done with careful consideration of ethical principles. AI algorithms must be transparent, explainable, and based on unbiased data to avoid perpetuating systemic biases in healthcare. Additionally, patient privacy must be protected, and human oversight must be maintained to ensure the safety and effectiveness of AI systems. Ultimately, the responsible use of AI in medicine should prioritize the best interests of patients and uphold the ethical standards of the medical profession.

I believe that AI can revolutionize medicine. It is common for people to fear AI especially when AI has proven extremely competent at doing the job of not only people in the medical field but in any job market out there. There have been AI built to diagnose clinical vignettes, read radiology reports, diagnose based off histological findings and many more. Naturally anyone who sees that would fear for the safety of their job or the their children’s job if AI were to be implemented in their field. However, this is not the case. AI has already existed in many different fields like aviation. You don’t see pilots being ousted from their work because you can put the plane on autopilot. Likewise, you will not see an anesthesiologist lose their job because an AI can safely administer the correct dosage of paralytics and sedatives throughout a patient’s surgery. AI can be just as much a tool to physicians as any other technology would be. You will always need a pilot in the cockpit of a plane and you will always need a medical professional to guide the healthcare of a patient.

We face the limits of the Earth, complicating society, health degradation, need for global governance & decentralization.
AI will be the next epoch-making tech vital to self-control the civilization complicating beyond our intelligence.
Finding & utilizing causality, AI will enable us even to understand & cure complex systems like genetic, immune, or nerve.
I hope we get environmental, economic, social (or human), and political sustainability with new techs & humane policies.

The FDA had never wanted to help people

Next is a meta AI driven by the initial layers that will pick the appropriate algorithms to use to rule out based on symptoms...

More Slime 👎🤮