Healthcare: The front-line of AI displacing human workers?
Want to see the effect of AI on an industry dependent on specialized human expertise? It’s happening today in hospitals.
Last week, Pranshu Verma wrote a thought-provoking article in The Washington Post about the gap between hospital administrators and practitioners when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. At first glance, it might be overlooked as a simple future-fears-of-AI piece, but Verma surfaces some deeper questions and brings some really interesting points to light:
- The utilization of AI in hospitals is well underway.
- The potenital of AI to determine action and deploy expertise heralds a fundamental shift in what it means to be a health practitioner.
- Nurse and doctor shortages may be accelerating this shift — or even necessitating it.
- Examining how this scenario plays out could offer insights on how increased investment in AI may disrupt industries reliant on human expertise in the future (finance, law, accounting, marketing, screenwriting, teaching, etc.).
It’s not rocket surgery to connect the dots on why hospital bosses love AI. Especially as healthcare systems stare down the double barrels of outcome-based compensation from payors and increasing demand from boomers aging into more expensive treatment paths. In fact, the economics of healthcare continue to be redefined by the boomers again and again. As Candace Moody wrote for The Florida Times Union:
An enormous amount of health care spending is invested in the postponement of dying. Courtney Martin wrote in the New York Times last year: “According to the National Institute of Health, 5 percent of the most seriously ill Americans account for more than 50 percent of health care spending, with most costs incurred in the last year of life in hospital settings.”
Economics aside, AI clearly has the potential to help deliver a better quality of care. According to the WaPo article, a recent study found “AI readings of mammograms detected 20 percent more cases of breast cancer than radiologists.” Add up the potential process efficiencies and outcome improvements, and AI in healthcare could be the answer for an essential industry struggling to evolve and meet scaling demand.
By the same token, fears of over-reliance on tech in healthcare leading to incorrect diagnoses, data breaches and more loom large. Senator Mark R. Warner (D-Va.): “I worry that premature deployment of unproven technology could lead to the erosion of trust in our medical professionals and institutions.”
Good point from the senator. But isn’t an “erosion of trust” at the heart of introducing AI to any organization or industry? Maybe not distrust in a given person’s ability to do their job — but an overall distrust of humans to be as efficient, rational, fast and goal-focused as machines tend to be.
But those on the leading edge of AI in healthcare are quick to remark how this isn’t about getting rid of people, but simply better-managing human assets and expertise. For instance…
Thomas J. Fuchs, Dean for AI at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine: “You cannot transplant people, but you can transplant knowledge and experience to some degree with these models that then can help physicians in the community.”
And as Verma wrote in his article, David L. Reich (President of The Mount Sinai hospital and Mount Sinai Queens) said “the ultimate goal is not to replace health workers, but something more simple: getting the right doctor to the right patient at the right time.”
The right doctor to the right patient at the right time doesn’t sound all bad, does it? Especially if you’re the patient. Who wouldn’t want to see the right doctor at the right time when their health hangs in the balance?
Now, consider all the crystal-ball gazing you’ve read about a future where AI replaces humans, enslaves us — or ushers in a utopia for us. Then consider how good AI seems to be at detecting cancer. And how hospital leaders are focused on using AI to “transplant knowledge” and get “the right doctor to the right patient at the right time.” What’s happening in healthcare — as we speak — sounds a lot like the future effects of AI currently being debated.
To throw gas on the fire, America’s nurse and doctor shortage is opening the door to the concept that a move to embrace AI in hospitals isn’t just some efficiency-grab by administrators overly focused on P&L statements. According to WaPo, some union voices believe hospitals are hyping AI so “they can cut back on their labor without any questions.”
But the fact is, there is a very real nurse and doctor shortage — and it’s only getting worse. And if there aren’t enough nurses or doctors to provide care, investing more in AI may be a necessary strategy and tactic to keep up with the accelerating demand already straining our healthcare systems.
So progress continues, even as the healthcare industry wrestles with thorny, pressing — and essential — questions about bias inherent in the datasets fueling AI, as well as the need to establish clear, industry-wide and transparent metrics to gauge the net effect AI has on quality and volume of care. They’re building the plane as they fly it, because they pretty much have to.
The case study this will write could become a blueprint — or cautionary tale — on what happens when an industry dependent on specialized human expertise goes all-in on AI.
And let’s face it: you can’t find an industry with much more of a need for specialized expertise than healthcare (with good reason: nurses and doctors literally have our lives in their hands).
So how will the reliance on these human experts change as the healthcare industry relies more heavily on AI? Will nurses and doctors be replaced — as some predict all of humanity will be? Or might they be displaced — switching from the driver’s seat to passenger seat as AI takes the wheel? Might they just become a human-facing “presentation level” of healthcare? Performers tasked with explaining to patients the prognoses, diagnoses, and care paths determined and prescribed by AI? Or will they evolve into operators — “pilots” of their hospital’s medtech stack? Think of the extensive level of automation in a commercial airline flight, yet a pilot and copilot still inhabit each cockpit.
No matter what path or pace the healthcare industry takes as its investment in AI increases — or what destination those steps lead to — we all have a front-row seat to see the effect AI will have on the most essential of human expert workers. And it’s happening in real time.
Sources:
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/10/ai-chatbots-hospital-technology/
Florida Times Union: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2017/01/06/boomers-driving-changes-end-life-care/15738110007/
NurseJournal: https://nursejournal.org/articles/why-is-there-a-nursing-shortage/
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/02/artificial-intelligence-breast-cancer-screening/
NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166873700/whats-the-cure-for-americas-doctor-shortage
