Has your family doctor started using AI during your visits?
Maybe a better question these days is, do you even have a family doctor?
Ontario’s Auditor General recently decided that doctors are failing patients by using AI. She found loads of mistakes and poorly designed health care plans in the AI written assessments of patient appointments. Well, of course she did. Because she didn’t take into account how this tool is used.
My physician has been using artificial intelligence for a long time now. I know this, because she asks for my permission to enable it at every visit. It doesn’t replace her at all. It helps in several ways.
The program “listens” to our conversation and because it already knows my health history, it comes up with possible diagnoses and solutions. It makes notes while my doctor and I chat. Instead of pecking at the computer, my doctor is fully focused on me. She sees on my face whether I’m upset or if something is no big deal. She can’t do that with her nose at a monitor, taking notes.
No Note-Taker is Infallible
The AI sometimes makes errors. But it doesn’t get the final word. It makes suggestions and comes up with possibilities and treatment plans. The doctor and other medical personnel still go over it to make a human determination about the patient’s case.
One doctor tells the Toronto Star that he can see four more patients per day since using this tool. For a strained health-care system, twenty more doctor visits per week is significant.
I don’t want artificial intelligence making art. That’s a human activity. But if it can assist someone who’s overloaded with responsibilities and help more people, I’m on board. I’ve seen with my own eyes how it’s helping my physician and she loves the efficiency of using it.
Statistics show that humans make more errors than AI in medical note-taking. That’s because, as the Star article points out, people get tired and stressed whereas AI does not. I want my doctor to listen to me rather than take dictation. Let the tech-bot do that for her. In my view, this is what AI is for.
Your doctor is doing it right. First she’s asking your permission prior to enabling it, she’s using it as a tool to assist and offer suggestions, she’s responding to the clients comfort and she takes all the inputs and makes the final decision.
Saying that, AI is not a mature technology, voice recognition listening to a conversation is unreliable but it’s a work in progress but as a tool it can add value.
When AI is left to its own devices making the final decision, we’re not there, and I’m not going to say yet, for that day is data dependant and data quality is highly suspect.
I agree, it can add value. It should be doing this kind of work that’s confirmed by humans. Not art or anything creative.
Yes, my family doctor uses AI. I didn’t like it, but he seemed to like it and I like him, so I said let’s agree to disagree. He listens to me and my concerns, and is super caring in general, so I trust his decision to use it.
Well, good for you because it will ease his workload but he will still have the final say on what goes into your chart and what he recommends.
Not sure how I feel about this.
If it’s the equivalent of a transcription app like Otter, then I’m fine with it.
As a journalist, I use the same app for transcribing interviews. But it does consistently make mistakes.
I use a transcription app too and it’s full of mistakes. But that’s why I, the human, must be the last line of defense, just like the MD is.
We discussed this, thanks to your experience on http://www.gracefullyandfrankly.com and as I recall the biggest reservation we had was that in the US, any information could possibly be sent on to your health care insurer, showing that “she had xyz back in 2009 and so it was a pre-existing condition; we’re not covering it.” But for us here in Canada, as you point out, if it helps to streamline the doctor/patient experience, add valuable insight and record keeping, etc., the good far outweighs the negative.