• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. artificial intelligence>

Doctors and AI: A potential win-win for physicians and patients

Robert Pearl
https://twitter.com/robertpearlmd?lang=en
August 04, 2023
Doctors and AI: A potential win-win for physicians and patients
Getty Images

Pearl is a clinical professor of plastic surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group.

Many who follow the news about AI chatbots and their use in the medical field view it as a battle for supremacy between AI and physicians. But a careful analysis leads me to a different conclusion.


ChatGPT and other generative AI applications are becoming more powerful by the month. Recently, researchers organized a head-to-head contest between a chatbot and a group of physicians. The challenge: answer 195 medical questions from the r/AskDocs subreddit page. A team of independent healthcare professionals then reviewed the responses and crowned AI the clear winner.

Not only were AI-generated answers more accurate and detailed than those provided by physicians, but the bot’s responses were deemed significantly more empathetic, as well.

This AI triumph came not long after Google’s Med-PaLM 2 scored an expert-level 86.5% on the U.S. medical license exam and before ChatGPT learned to write clinical notes just as well as humans.

AI can now retain and recall a near-limitless corpus of knowledge, translate text into multiple languages and convert highly complex ideas into simple terms. These qualities make chatbots ideal for diagnosing rare diseases, offering 24/7 medical advice and improving communications with patients.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This should be viewed as great news for the healthcare industry and not as a threat to doctors. That’s because well-trained humans will always remain superior to machines in one vitally important area of medical care: Only humans can establish personal relationships built on a foundation of mutual trust and commitment.

This is a critical component of good healthcare and the best weapon in the fight against our nation’s most troublesome medical problem. Chronic disease is the nation’s leading cause of death and disability, affecting 60% of all Americans. Studies affirm that a combination of preventive care, early diagnosis and lifestyle change (diet, exercise, counseling, etc.) helps people avoid heart attack, cancer and stroke (the life-threatening complications of asthma, diabetes, hypertension and obesity and other chronic illnesses).

Communicating lifestyle and preventative care changes to a patient demands a doctor’s focused and unhurried attention—something few primary care physicians can provide today. It’s not for lack of trying or desire. Rather, the U.S. medical system doesn’t train or retain enough primary care physicians and it inadequately finances the ones it has.

Of course, one important solution is adding more primary care physicians given that the primary care workforce declined by 11% from 2005 to 2015. And, despite the worsening chronic disease epidemic, our nation spends just 6% of total healthcare dollars on primary care—a figure that hasn’t budged in two decades. This, despite a Harvard-Stanford research collaboration that found adding 10 primary care physicians to a community increases average life expectancy by 250% when compared to adding 10 specialists.

Generative AI can help people solve these problems.

Doctors are constantly battling the clock as they see more and more patients each day. The average office visit is down to 17.5 minutes, barely enough time to order tests and prescribe medications, let alone build trust, show empathy or discuss lifestyle improvements. It shows. Today, 60% of Americans feel their doctors are rushing through exams. An equal percentage of primary care doctors feel burned out, citing “increased workload” as a leading cause.

Sophisticated generative AI applications can complete some of the primary care physician’s more routine work so that doctors will have the time to do what they do best: provide the unhurried care that chronically ill patients so badly need.

The U.S. government must lead the way when it comes to protecting our nation’s health. Accomplishing that will require investments in both humans and machines. Here are three opportunities:

1. Reallocate dollars to primary care

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains a $2.68 trillion budget for Medicare and Medicaid. A scant 2% to 5% of that spending goes toward primary care services. Bumping that allocation to 8% would allow doctors to add vital support staff— assistants, dieticians and health coaches— thus boosting expertise, giving doctors more time to build trust with patients and helping reverse our nation’s chronic disease burden.

2. Increase residency positions

The United States faces a projected shortage of up to 48,000 primary care physicians by 2034. Yet, last year, more than 1,000 doctors graduated from medical school without a residency match. That’s because there weren’t enough government-sponsored training positions available. Congress can fix this problem by funding 1,000 more primary care positions each year—a tiny expenditure that would pay for itself within a couple of years with reduced medical expenses from chronic illness.

3. Invest in AI expertise

Doctors are starting to use generative AI for everyday tasks: writing letters to insurers, transcribing notes, double-checking diagnoses and populating medical records. These robotic undertakings help free up valuable time for doctors to spend with patients. But the pace of adoption is slow. With a small investment (like the $35 billion Congress earmarked for the “meaningful use” of electronic health records in 2009), the U.S. government would accelerate the development and implementation of safe and effective AI tools for primary care.

This combination of increased training, added office support and AI assistance will help rebuild the doctor-patient relationship, address our nation’s chronic disease epidemic and improve the failing health of America. It’s naïve to believe that relying on machines or doctors alone will be enough.

From Your Site Articles
  • Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest ›
artificial intelligence

Join an Upcoming Event

Artificial Intelligence

Living Room Conversations
Oct 03, 2023 at 5:00 pm MDT
Read More

Post Covid: The Unequal State of Health in America

USC Center for the Political Future
Oct 04, 2023 at 4:00 pm UTC-7
Read More
View All Events

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Dave Anderson

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Stephen E. Herbits

Conservatives attacking Americans’ First Amendment rights

Steve Corbin

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff
latest News

America’s greatest resource- Education

William Natbony
29 September

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Ken Powley
29 September

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Priya Iyer
28 September

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Leland R. Beaumont
28 September

How statelessness gambles with the lives of American families

Samantha Sitterly
27 September

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September
Recommended
America’s greatest resource- Education

America’s greatest resource- Education

Big Picture
Grand Canyon gap in America today

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Elections
The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Big Picture
There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Big Picture
Advancing human rights, worldwide

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Big Picture
Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Big Picture