Artificial intelligence continues to show promise in improving medical care.
For example, physicians at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City used AI to monitor patients in their “step-down” units. These patients are not sick enough to require hospitalization in an intensive care unit, but whose condition can deteriorate rapidly with minimal warning. AI systems monitored patients' vital signs, heart rhythms, lab results, and nurse observations. Patients were divided into two groups – those monitored with AI versus those monitored with traditional methods. For patients in the first group, if the AI detects the potential for medical deterioration, it sends an alert to the rapid response medical team to recommend administering appropriate therapy.
The researchers found that patients whose vital signs were monitored with AI were 43 percent more likely to receive medications to support their heart and circulatory system than patients monitored with traditional methods. Furthermore, patients monitored with AI had a lower mortality rate after 30 days (7%) compared to the group monitored by conventional methods (9.3%).
Dr. David Reich, senior author of the study, observed, “We consider these to be 'augmented intelligence' tools that speed up personalized clinical diagnoses by our doctors and nurses and accelerate treatments that help our patients. These are important steps towards the goal of learning the health system.”
Futuristic Robot Healer with Tablet PC 3D Render
Another team of researchers examined the ability of chatbots such as ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 to answer specific clinical questions such as “How should you manage a patient with known cirrhosis who is newly diagnosed with cirrhosis? Treated with incipient ascites?”
Responses were rated by eight clinicians, including experts in relevant fields. They found that “Both ChatGPT models scored high in accuracy, relevance, clarity, usefulness, and completeness. However, GPT-4 scored higher in all criteria. Furthermore, “ChatGPT's strength varies across sources. lies in the ability to rapidly access a wide array of medical data from By offering doctors instant access to the latest results, clinical standards, and specific cases, ChatGPT acts as a catalyst to keep them connected with the changing medical landscape. This competency enhances physicians' ability to make educated decisions when dealing with complex or unusual clinical scenarios.
Given these dramatic results, many patients are interested in AI-enhanced healthcare. According to one survey, “64% of respondents said they would trust a diagnosis made by AI over a human doctor. This percentage increases even more with Gen Z, with four in five of this generation saying that They will trust AI.”
I don't think AI is close to being ready to replace human therapists. Recently, Google's AI review was criticized for offering hilariously bad medical advice to patient questions. For example, when Google AI was asked, “How many stones should I eat?” He recommends eating “at least one small rock a day” and “disguising loose stones in foods like peanut butter and ice cream.” The incorrect answer was apparently taken from a satirical article. Onion.
But in the right hands, AI can certainly augment human clinicians, who can't always keep up with all the nuances of the latest literature. AI systems will not be limited by the need to sleep, eat, or attend to their personal lives. Already, many physicians rely on “physician extenders” such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants to help with busy workloads. I can easily see a day in the near future where AI will be another form of physician augmentation – perhaps even more reliable than humans.