The AI physician will not see you now — or ever, for that matter.
As artificial intelligence proliferates in healthcare, health system leaders told Becker's that human providers will always be part of the medical field, with their — AI-aided — treatment recommendations being discussed with patients and family members.
"Any patient care decisions — whether to participate in a clinical trial, to take a new prescription, to proceed with a potentially risky surgery — that ultimate decision should be made by patients and their caregivers or family members, obviously in consultation with their physician or provider," said Joe Depa, chief data and AI officer of Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare.
While eliminating humans from healthcare may seem like the realm of science fiction, Chinese researchers are reportedly developing an AI hospital that could launch later this year, Mr. Depa noted. That would never happen here, he added, because of regulations and ethical considerations.
Patient consent should also be required for "digital twins," where AI creates computer replicas of patients to help with treatment decisions, or even to watch AI-generated videos, which Emory Healthcare is experimenting with, he said.
However, Mr. Depa said nothing on the administrative side of healthcare should be off limits for AI. "Anything that is non-patient-facing, you should absolutely be leveraging data and AI to the fullest to help reduce administrative burden and take the cost of care down, and that includes rev cycle, that includes call centers," he said.
Automating those tasks will give healthcare providers more time to focus on patient care rather than, say, determining what is covered by insurance, he added.
"My take is that it will be very hard to 'carve out' parts of healthcare that are off limits," said Nigam Shah, MD, PhD, chief data scientist of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care. "Instead my take is that we should focus on finding the right approaches for human-AI teaming in a manner that ensures that agency and fiduciary responsibility of care are not eroded away."
Having humans involved in all healthcare decisions is not only ethically the right thing to do, but it also helps with healing, said Dennis Chornenky, chief AI adviser of Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Health.
"The experience of knowing that another human being understands our ailment and empathizes with us has been shown to have therapeutic effects on its own," he said. "While AI can greatly enhance many aspects of healthcare, it should not be involved in situations requiring complex ethical judgments, end-of-life care decisions, informed consent processes, and human compassion."
Robots — or AI — will simply never take the place of that human touch, health system leaders say.
"Human involvement is going to be enabled and empowered with AI," Mr. Depa said. "Nurses and physicians will get more and more data to help them make more timely and accurate decisions for patients and their families. At the end of the day, physicians and nurses are still going to be in demand. They're helping to communicate that decision with the patient and, of course, come up with the right decision with the patient as well."