What Is An Artificial Intelligence Doctor (And What It Isnt)?}

What is an Artificial Intelligence Doctor (and what it isnt)?

by

Lena Butler

Weve all watched or read science fiction before where there was a smart robot or computer that helped humans solve a problem that they couldnt solve on their own. So we are all familiar with the idea of Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. The AI theory is that a machine can be made that can thinkthat is, that can reason, learn and make smart decisions.

These days as we are all becoming aware, that is becoming no longer a matter of science fiction but a matter of science reality. In fact, science news has been buzzing as of late about the latest that they are trying to develop: AI doctors.

What is an AI doctor?

As you might guess, an AI doctor is basically software or a machine that can diagnose illnesses and prescribe drugs for a patient. Medicine was actually one of the first fields to look into the use of artificial intelligence. It was an ideal match, since both medicine and AI use highly structured reasoning systems for making decisions. The way AI doctors work is patterned after human brain processes. They learn from a massive knowledge base, observe data, and make logical conclusions. They can also learn from mistakes.

For now, AI doctors have been developed for specialized purposes. In the UK, the University of Sheffield is working on a program designed for patients in intensive care. The program watches their vital signs and decides which drugs to dole out and their amounts, ruling out ones which might be contraindicated to each other. The Mayo clinic in the US is using a system to diagnose endocarditis, a heart infection, based on patient data. Diagnosing this condition normally requires a camera attached to a probe inserted into a patients body, so the system has saved a lot in costs and trauma to the patient. These are just some examples of applications of AI in medicine today.

What makes AI doctors different from human doctors is that they arent limited by human capacity. AI doctors, having millions of points of data to draw on, will remember where a human doctor might forget. Because of this, they are in theory designed for more accurate diagnosis. AI doctors also do not need to sleep or eat and do not get sick themselves. This means they can work 24/7, stay alert the whole time and may cut costs for the hospital they work in.

What an AI doctor is not

Artificial Intelligence doctors are not being designed to replace human doctors. Although one of the advantages of AI doctors is that they have the potential to be more accurate and think of things that human doctors might miss, they are not being designed to work on their own.

Although there are a lot of different designs for AI doctors, all of them derive their knowledge base from information that human beings have fed them. It is also human doctors who train these systems and show them mistakes that they have made.

Humans are meant to keep an eye on these systems as they are being used. They can also be overridden.

No doubt the world of medicine is going to be revolutionized by AI doctors. But no matter what, nothing will ever replace the bedside manner of a real live human doctor or the healing warmth of a live human nurse.

Lena Butler, the author of

Health & Drug Testing Information Center

a longer version of this article is located at

What is an Artificial Intelligence Doctor (and what it isnt)?

, and resources from other home health testing articles are used such as

Iscreen Drug Testing Kits

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What is an Artificial Intelligence Doctor (and what it isnt)?}