New Delhi: Doctors face Hobson’s choice of embracing AI (Artificial Intelligence). There is no wishing it away.AI is going to be an inevitable tool of healthcare in times to come. Doctors will have to hug this prodigy of technology to survive. This is what more or less sums up the thoughts of Dr Ajay Kumar, past President of Indian Medical Association (IMA) and famed Urologist, expressed in APICON 24 held at Bharat Mandapam. Smelling the coffee, Dr Kumar painted AI not as some predator but a colleague to work with. Read with his caveats, AI is all set to bring about a welcome and paradigm shift in healthcare. Dr Ajay also dwelt upon Limits of AI in medicine, barriers and ethical questions, stressing the need of human surveillance.
APICON had chosen Dr Ajay Kumar, a veteran and a keen observer of things and a bellwether of sort, was given the subject that is blowing every intellectual mind in the world these days. His insightful speech around the subject- Influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in future medical care, proved an eye opener and primed doctors in APICON for tackling AI, the upcoming disruptor, in a better way. In his inimitable style, Dr Kumar like an oracle in no uncertain terms said, ‘Remember, AI may not replace doctors but doctors who do not know how to use AI will be replaced for sure.’ Rounding off his speech in a tone of finality, Dr Kumar said, ‘The Trimurti (Allopathy, Ayush and Cam ) shall be healer of mind, soul and body under the influence of AI.’ Dr Kumar rather coaxed his community to be forward looking and welcome AI as their colleague in medicine and shrug off any irrational fear. CAM stands for Complementary and Alternative Medicine). He called it Vision 2047.
Dr Ajay said AI has come in a big way to influence medical practice of future and thoroughly enumerated the way AI is going to reinforce healthcare. According to him, past decade has shown its enormous potential in healthcare delivery worldwide with its significant impact in disciplines such as drug discovery, genomics, radiography, pathology, detecting outbreaks of epidemics and health research.
Citing Bill Gates, Dr Ajay asserted that AI is the Future of Healthcare. Dr Kumar said that AI will be useful in healthcare in innumerable ways namely disease detection and diagnosis, natural language processing (NLP) for electronic Health Records (HER), robotics in surgery, Telemedicine and virtual health assistants (bots), drug discovery and development, remote patient monitoring : Tele-ICU, Tele-pathology and tele- radiology wii become more prominent , Healthcare operations and resource management, Automation of administrative tasks, Revolutionizing social media content generation and personalized treatment ( person centric medicine) et al.
Dr Kumar gave a comprehensive lowdown on how AI is going to help in implementation of digital health in the country, how will AI come handy for clinic / hospital owner, how will it help a medical student and how will it help in medical research.
To the question, Will AI replace doctors? , Dr Kumar said, ‘There is speculation about AI eventually replacing physicians, particularly in fields like radiology, pathology and dermatology where AI’s diagnostic ability can match or even exceed that of clinicians. However, research suggests that physician-machine collaboration will outperform either one alone. It is unlikely that AI will completely replace physicians any time soon. The human aspects of care including empathy, compassion , critical thinking and complex decision making are invaluable in providing holistic patient care beyond diagnosis and treatment decisions.’
