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The author is the founder of Sifted, a European start-up platform backed by the Financial Times.
Artificial intelligence holds the promise of revolutionizing productivity, especially in the healthcare industry. With aging populations, limited resources, and overburdened medical professionals, a productivity revolution is in high demand. As highlighted by Dr. Margaret McCartney in a recent FT Weekend essay commemorating the 75th anniversary of Britain’s National Health Service, the job of a general practitioner has become nearly impossible.
However, the healthcare sector has seen its fair share of unfulfilled promises and disappointments from technologists claiming to transform the industry. One notable example is IBM’s Watson supercomputer, which gained fame by winning the quiz game Jeopardy! in 2011. Despite IBM’s claims that Watson could tackle cancer, it turned out to be an overhyped solution. Furthermore, public trust in the use of AI in healthcare remains low, with a Pew Research Center poll revealing that 60% of US respondents were uncomfortable with AI being used for diagnosis and treatment.
Nevertheless, the emergence of generative AI has renewed hope for a healthcare revolution powered by technology. Lloyd Minor, the dean of Stanford Medical School, believes that recent advancements in AI will fulfill the initial vision of Watson’s creators. While AI has been utilized in specific healthcare areas, such as drug interaction monitoring and skin lesion analysis, Minor asserts that generative AI models will have an impact on every aspect of healthcare, including patient care, administration, training, and drug discovery. He compares generative AI to inflection points in human history like language, the printing press, and the internet.
To harness this opportunity, Stanford Medical School has joined forces with the university’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence to address ethical and safety concerns associated with AI in healthcare. Their joint initiative, called RAISE-Health, aims to monitor promising AI applications, drive research, and educate patients and healthcare providers on responsible technology use.
AI is already transforming healthcare delivery in various ways. One notable application is in surgery, where start-up Proximie has created a digital medical resource and infrastructure by recording thousands of surgeries. Proximie’s platform enables real-time sharing of best practices, improved training, case reviews, and patient safety, with the help of generative AI for data analysis and reporting.
Nadine Hachach-Haram, the founder of Proximie, emphasizes the importance of using AI selectively in specific use cases that bring clear benefits to patients and medical staff. Overcoming skepticism from both healthcare professionals and patients, Hachach-Haram stresses that technology can enhance outcomes and save costs. Safeguarding patient privacy is another crucial aspect, which can be achieved through secure data analysis enabled by generative AI. Data, she believes, has the potential to save lives.
Even major technology companies notorious for their handling of personal data are investing in generative AI for healthcare. Google, for instance, is testing the medical chatbot Med-PaLM 2 at the Mayo Clinic. However, Google is cautious about wider implementation until potential flaws are resolved.
At the RAAIS conference, Vivek Natarajan, an AI researcher at Google Health, expressed excitement about how AI could revolutionize global healthcare by providing access to quality care to billions of people. However, considering the complexity and sensitivity of the sector, it is crucial to exercise wisdom in the application of AI.
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