AI in Healthcare - The Future of Medicine?

In this day and age, some form of artificial intelligence has become integrated into all of our lives. Everywhere from schools where students utilise it for deep research for a project, or as the easy way out for an essay, to the streets of NYC where a tourist might ask it for a restaurant recommendation, AI is now everywhere you look. One of the industries that is capitalising on this new technology is healthcare where AI is helping doctors move forward into the future of medicine.

“The optimist in me hopes that AI can make us doctors better versions of ourselves to better care for our patients.” This quote from Adam Rodman, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School effectively sums up his hopes for AI in the field of medicine. His hope that AI can make both he and his colleagues more effective in their field is centred around bias - the human feeling that a doctor has when he communicates with a patient can sometimes cloud judgement in a diagnosis. Belief that in the future AI can be used as a tool that works alongside doctors to detect prejudice in diagnosis is not the only goal for AI in medicine. 

Marinka Zitnik a biomedical informatics professor believes that AI can be utilised in drug discovery and biomedical research. However, contrary to what one may think, AI’s goal in research work is not solely related to analysing existing information - Zitnik is confident that with time and training, artificial intelligence could be used to innovate when it comes to medicinal discoveries. This claim means that AI could be used to take in data about target cells and proteins and develop new molecules and predict how they may communicate with different systems. 

While all of these advancements may seem great, they come alongside a host of drawbacks. The fact that AI can be used to eliminate human biases when they are dealing with patients is great. However, as artificial intelligence learns from experience, and it will be doctors who make use of the intelligence in its early stages, it is quite likely that some form of bias will be cemented into its responses from the start which may somewhat nullify its possible benefits if not dealt with quickly. Also, intelligence models have been known to “hallucinate” in the past, making them ineffective and possibly dangerous in some cases with incorrect diagnoses. 

Now that both the issues and benefits of artificial intelligence in the medicinal field have been discussed, what is the verdict? Do doctors feel that the benefits far outweigh the harms, or are they wary of the damage that AI could do if left unchecked? The answer - a little bit of both. The evidence of the possibilities that an AI model could create are lucrative, however, the damage that could be caused from a biased or “hallucinated” response means that greater precautions must be put into place. “The best way a doctor could use it now is for a second opinion, to second-guess themselves when they have a tricky case - How could I be wrong? What am I missing? What other questions should I ask?” said doctor Rodman when referring to AI. An artificial intelligence model working alongside a medicinal practitioner would allow for the benefits of AI to come into effect while also preventing the harms by keeping certain checks in place.

The future of medicine beckons and artificial intelligence will help progress towards it. However, as with all things in life, nothing good comes without any problems, and artificial intelligence poses plenty of them alongside its possible positive effects. However, I believe that the right balance can be found, and several qualified medical experts are working on finding it. AI healthcare is abound and we have to adjust to move forward with the demands of the future.