Will Generative AI replace Doctors?
Can AI help with some of the challenges of healthcare systems around the world, and how will medical professions change with the evolution of AI in healthcare?
I am often asked whether Generative AI will replace doctors.
I’ve spent the last decade building AI for healthcare, and Generative AI in healthcare has been my focus area for the last couple of years. Many of my good friends are medical doctors. So constantly thinking about this is inevitable - what does it all mean for medicine?
Last year, a research paper has demonstrated remarkable capabilities of GPT4, showing that it can pass the US Medical Licensing Exams (USMLE). More research work has been published since, demonstrating similar results. Does this mean that ChatGPT can replace medical professionals?
Healthcare systems are facing many challenges
Healthcare systems around the world are facing so many challenges. Here are a few painful examples:
Shortage of healthcare professionals: there is a global shortage of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, leading to increased workloads, longer wait times, and eventually reduced quality of care.
Chronic diseases: the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer requires ongoing management and resources.
Aging population: globally, population is aging, driving up the demand for healthcare services and long-term care, putting additional pressure on the system.
Burnout: high levels of stress, long hours, and workload contribute to burnout among healthcare professionals, leading to churn and more staff shortage.
Disparities: rural, low-income, and marginalized communities often lacking the necessary resources, facilities, or medical professionals.
Technology: many healthcare systems struggle with outdated infrastructure, fragmented data, and the challenge of integrating new technologies.
Security threats: cybersecurity threats and fraud in healthcare systems create risks for patient data and put additional pressure on financial resources.
And those are just a few examples. This makes it quite clear that healthcare systems need innovative solutions.
healthcare systems around the world are facing many challenges, and it is quite clear they need innovative solutions.
AI to the rescue?
Pre-Generative AI refers to AI technologies created prior to the Generative AI era.
Already in the Pre-Generative AI era, AI has been implemented in healthcare, enabling many use cases to support healthcare systems. Here are just a few examples:
Predictive analytics, that help healthcare providers identify high-risk patients by analyzing medical histories, genetic information, lifestyle factors, etc., enabling early intervention.
Chatbots that assist patients with scheduling appointments, answering common questions, managing inquiries and complaints, etc., reducing the administrative burden on healthcare staff.
Medical imaging: AI algorithms that analyze medical images, such as X-Rays and CT scans, helping medical professionals with clinical decision support.
AI scribes that assist with transcribing clinical encounters and summarizing clinical notes, reducing the time clinicians spend on documentation and allowing clinicians to dedicate more time to patient care.
My team and I have been building technologies in some of those areas. And there are many more examples of AI used in healthcare already today. This will evolve further.
Seeing what generative AI can do looks very promising, at least to the naked eye. How Can healthcare systems leverage this Generative AI technology in the most effective and safe way, to help further alleviate some of their challenges?
It is certainly an era of great innovation. More on that soon.
If you have ever watched “House”, you know that patients don’t always present the classic symptoms “by the book”.
So, will AI replace the medical professionals?
The answer is no. Here’s why.
First and foremost, we must remember that AI is not a substitute for human judgment, expertise, or responsibility. AI is a tool that we need to use responsibly and ethically. We need to be aware of the risks of using Generative AI in healthcare, and we need to be critical of the sources and quality of its results. Regulation will continue to require an accountable human.
There’s more. The doctor-patient relationship often represents long-term trust, based on a relationship between humans that was built over time. While AI can demonstrate empathy and patience - sometimes better than humans, mind you - it is incapable of building relationships with humans, truly understanding their fears and hopes. And don’t get me started on Her. Love ScarJo, but not going there.
The clinician’s work also involves a holistic understanding of the human in front of them. Understanding the different aspects of the human’s life, social, environmental and even cultural nuances. Medical decisions often involve ethical considerations that require deep understanding and sensitivity to the individual patient's circumstances. Doctors often need to navigate these complex decisions, weighing risks, benefits, and ethical implications, something even Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) would likely not be capable of doing. More on AGI and what it means in one of the next episodes, so make sure to subscribe to this blog.
We must also remember that real-world medical practice is often messy and unpredictable. If you have ever watched House, you already know that patients don’t always present the classic symptoms “by the book”, and there are often conflicting or incomplete pieces of information. Doctors use their experience and intuition to make sense of these situations. AI, on the other hand, relies heavily on structured data and predefined patterns, making it less effective in chaotic or atypical situations.
And we should not forget that much of the work performed by medical professionals involves physical interaction and human touch. AI cannot touch, smell, or form an intuitive impression of a patient. Or, as one of my doctor friends noted, there's no substitute for the human doctor's observation "the patient does not look good to me".
as one of my doctor friends noted, there's no substitute for the human doctor's observation "the patient does not look good to me"
What will change then?
No doubt, the work of medical professionals will change, given the ever-evolving nature of the AI tools they are going to have in their gladstone bag. AI will take over routine and administrative tasks, and the work of the humans in healthcare will become increasingly sophisticated and will likely focus on using the right tools, interpreting the AI insights, making the right assessments and judgement calls, and more. This will change the medicine profession and will require new skills, such as understanding how AI works.
Helping medical professionals evolve their AI literacy is one of the goals of this blog series, Verge of Singularity.
And at the same time, AI will give medical professionals more time to focus on the human-centered aspects of care, interacting, examining and truly understanding the patient that is in front of them. And that is the core of medicine, as it was originally meant to be, isn’t it?
So, for whether Generative AI will replace doctors, my answer is still no.
But, in the era of Generative AI, the past statement made by AMA president becomes even more relevant:
AI will not replace doctors — but doctors who use AI will replace those who don’t.
AI will not replace doctors — but doctors who use AI will replace those who don’t
About Verge of Singularity.
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