There is speculation about AI eventually replacing physicians.
By Dr. Ted A. James
Medical Director and Vice Chair, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Associate Professor of Surgery
Harvard Medical School
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform health care and disrupt the field of medicine in significant ways. It has shown remarkable progress in tasks such as diagnostics, data analysis and precision medicine and is already being applied in areas ranging from patient triage to cancer detection.
However, the recent availability of AI to the public, including language models like ChatGPT, has increased the awareness of AI and its potential capabilities in medicine. The continued growth of AI has spurred interest and debate concerning its broader use in patient care.
ChatGPT successfully passed the USMLE and can solve internal medicine case files, indicating its versatility and potential for future clinical applications. In fact, Google and DeepMind developed the Med-PaLM language model trained on several existing medical Q&A datasets to offer “safe and helpful answers” to questions posed by health care professionals and patients.
Language models, like ChatGPT and Med-PaLM, generate responses in a conversational manner to written statements, referred to as prompts, entered by users in a chat window. This is achieved without the need for coding, as the models utilize their training and data to generate contextually relevant responses.
In the near future, physicians may leverage medical-grade AI language models for consultations, receiving valuable insights and assistance in various aspects of patient care. We may even see prompts like the following become commonplace in health care:
- Provide advice on the diagnosis and treatment for these symptoms.
- Create a personalized treatment plan based on the patient’s age and lifestyle.
- Analyze this X-ray to detect abnormalities.
- Identify risk factors from this patient’s EHR.
- Write a letter explaining the medical necessity of this treatment.
By leveraging these powerful tools, doctors can improve the quality of care while saving time on tasks that can be automated with AI. With further development and refinement, AI technology could play an important role in enhancing the standard of care.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT TRENDS IN MEDICINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
