What is your opinion on artificial intelligence and its use in medical practice?

Artificial intelligence is one of the emerging technologies that has the ability to execute tasks without explicitly being programmed the method to: it mimics human reasoning, thinking, decision making to come to the final decision. As years pass, these advanced facilities are being utilised for many healthcare purposes like for example Mabu the healthcare robot was introduced to hospitals to assist patients manage their recovery process. Ilchenko (1) states that by the end of 2021, ‘the technology research company assumes that 75% of healthcare organisations will have invested in their AI potential by 2021 to improve the overall performance’. By 2030, AI will have access to different sources of data to discover patterns in certain diseases and plan treatment plans. Robots are being invented to help patients recover quickly to have a better quality of life but to what extent would these technologies improve the healthcare and patients? Would they lead to a more developed world or cause concerns for the public?

Healthcares investing in AI systems would encourage the economic growth of organisations due to the high productivity level. Unlike humans, AI systems would maintain the same level of productivity whilst doing repetitive tasks for example filling out applications or doing continuous paperwork. By the healthcare spending less time on administrative tasks, medical professionals can invest more time managing patients’ health and there would also be reduced waiting times for patients due to the higher number of staffs available. This also enables faster yet strategic decision making as well as carrying the action out quicker, hinting at the healthcare faster development and more patients recovering quicker.

This is supported by the creation of ‘Google Health’ where kidney injuries are predicted 2 days before the actual damage which reduces the potential damage that could have been caused by addressing the root problem earlier on. In contrast to this, the current medical practice isn’t designed to notice these injuries until after the injury has been done which shows how AI is affecting healthcare positively. The difference in sensitivity and accuracy can be used to identify biomarkers that are linked with specific illnesses, diagnose patients, manage treatment plans which increases the success rate of that healthcare as well as saves healthcare a lot of time.

However, the increasing use of the AI systems means that the employment of humans is threatened. If more and more AI systems are invented, they would gradually replace humans who can do similar tasks but with less efficiency. More companies and organisations would be more hesitant to employ human workers due to the dramatic difference in the execution of workload, resulting to the human race being more dependent on AI systems. Even though, in the long run, it would be cheaper to use AI systems (don’t have to pay it to use it), it can be very dangerous. In healthcare, empathy and friendly communication skills are prioritised, however these technologies are unable to engage with patients on an emotional level.

Whether it is creating an approaching atmosphere for the patients and visitors or providing advices on their treatment, communication is vital for patient’s recovery. Therefore, due to the AI systems failing to provide care and unable to build trust to this extent, the patients might be left to feel emotionally unsupported and uncomfortable to share their emotions and experiences.

Furthermore, the growth of AI systems would result in fierce competition for students who want to study medicine. This could cause more students to not look after their mental health while studying for medicine or could cause a large decline in students who want to study medicine due to how hard it would be to enter the career. In the long run, this would be an issue as more people would become lazy to learn important medical information which causes less of the population to know about how to provide appropriate help in emergencies like accidents.

On the other hand, by the healthcare being more open to AI systems, it would put less stress on working doctors and hospital staffs as the workload is being shared out. With the AI systems being available all the time, more patients’ needs can be addressed and this would also positively impact the hospital working environment as well as the staff’s mental health.

BMJ (2) states that ‘every year more than 237 million medication errors are made in England’ which causes NHS to unnecessarily spend £98 million+ repairing the damage made by these mistakes. As well as directly affecting lives, these human errors have caused emotional suffering to the patient’s family and friends. AI systems can be the solution to this issue as it is designed so that it can learn from its past mistakes which results in less careless errors being made in the future. By the NHS not investing money into unnecessary expensive lab tests, they can save a lot of money which can be used to help other patients who need NHS funding or it can be saved to control future crisis for example pandemics like covid 19. Even though money needs to be spent daily updating and backing up expensive softwares and hardwares or even building these complex machines, it’s stated by ‘Frost and Sullivn’ that Artificial Intelligence has the capability to reduce the cost of treatments by up to 50% which would profit the healthcare.

Furthermore, AI systems would have a higher chance of treating rare diseases like for example, BERG utilised Artificial Intelligence to find the treatment for the rare disease, Parkinson’s disease. Since the brain is a delicate complex organ, it is hard for neurosurgeons to effectively treat it however BERG has managed to link human body chemicals that were unheard of before, leading to more patients being cured. However, there could also be a chance of AI incorrectly diagnosing diseases. It needs large amounts of data to make right detections but if there isn’t enough information about rare diseases, there is a higher chance that AI would make a fatal mistake.

As more and more AI gets used, many organizations have an inclination to access your personal interests to further develop the effectiveness of their services. This would mean that patients’ private information would be stored digitally and could be at risk of being leaked due to the healthcare’s lack of security. Even though laws such as ‘Data Protection Act’, ‘Computer Misuse Act’ reduce the possibility of this detrimental incident from happening, there is still a possibility that well-trained hackers could get unauthorized access to this confidential evidence or even deleting important information about the patients. This often causes the patients to fear introducing AI systems to manage their personal data which would be considered a disadvantage. Therefore, to ease the public’s reluctance to bring AI into healthcares, they would have to prove that AI is effective in executing tasks, spend money into services that would keep sensitive data safe as well as explain to the government and the public that the money invested in these advanced technologies would be worth it.

Furthermore, the intense use of AI would cause many environmentalists to be worried about the future of the Earth. If healthcare introduces AI systems, more electronic devices would be made which would have to be discarded when they are damaged or unwanted. These devices would have to be disposed of in landfills in low-income countries which will encourage the release of harmful chemicals like lead or mercury. This therefore pollutes the atmosphere, land and waste system yet also is very toxic to humans. It causes mental health disorders like brain damage, cardiovascular diseases etc which stunts the growth of residents in the less developing country. With no solution as to how to clean up the problem of illegal dumping, more people’s lives are threatened. Piling of landfills also causes detrimental environmental impacts like less space for the country to develop industries on or more greenhouse gas effects due to the burning of e-waste.

As with all creations, there are many advantages and disadvantages of increasing the use of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare. If healthcare uses these inventions and its huge potential without relying on these creations too much, it would make a positive significant contribution to the welfare of patients, economic gains and scientific research.

- Yarmigga Sharvesvaren

Reference list:

1.Ilchenko V. AI Adoption in Healthcare: 10 Pros and Cons [Internet]. ByteAnt. ByteAnt; 2021 [cited 2021Jun29].

Available from: https://www.byteant.com/blog/ai-adoption-in-healthcare-10-pros-and-cons/

2. BMJ. [Online]. Available from: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200611183921.htm [Accessed 29 June 2021].

3.ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTHCARE? [Online]. Available from: https://www.chg-meridian.co.uk/explore-chg/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare.html [Accessed 29 June 2021].