Doctor AI

Alert reader Caitlin Breen sent me a Substack article written by a doctor-friend of hers, Angela Thyer. The article, titled "Doctor AI will see you now," makes many points about the effect of AI on the practice of medicine. In this blog post, using lots of quotes, I’ll mention just a few of them.

By now we all know of the significant impacts AI is having on medicine, especially the fact that we can now track our health data online and instantly find information about our ailments and symptoms.  “Your AI doctor will know your allergies, conditions, medications, supplements, eating and exercise patterns, and family history.” Because AI is good at pattern recognition, it can notice deviations in your health. “And unlike your actual doctor, it won’t be running behind and burned out.”

While some aspects of AI are useful for doctors, such as providing them with the latest research and writing clinical notes, Dr. Thyer bemoans a new battleground: AI vs AI. “Your doctor submits a request for a procedure. The insurance AI denies it. Your doctor’s AI scours your records and resubmits an appeal. The insurance AI finds another loophole….”

It’s not just battles with insurance companies. “Physicians are exhausted by trying to get the care they want their patients to have. The patient is losing." Because of such struggles as well as the cuts in physician pay and increased responsibilities, Dr. Thyer tells us that we now have “a significant and growing shortage of primary care physicians.”

“Here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud: for a lot of people, it might actually be an upgrade. Doctor AI isn’t replacing the doctor who sits down with you for thirty minutes and knows your name. It’s replacing a seven-minute visit after a four-month wait with someone who has never met you, for a problem that has been bothering you for months. That is our current system.”

Oh my.

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