For all the technological wonders of modem medicine, health care-with its fax machines and clipboards (写字板) —is out of date. This outdated era is slowly drawing to a close as the industry catches up with the artificial-intelligence (AI) revolution.
Eric Topol, an expert in heart disease and enthusiast for digital medicine, thinks AI will be particularly useful for such tasks as examining images, observing heart traces for abnormalities or turning doctors' words into patient records. It will be able to use masses of data to work out the best treatments, and improve workflows in hospitals. In short, AI is set to save time, lives and money.
The fear some people have is that AI will be used to deepen the assembly-line culture of modem medicine. If it gives a "gift of time" to doctors, they argue that this bonus should be used to extend consultations, rather than simply speeding through them more efficiently.
That is a fine idea, but as health swallows an ever-bigger share of national wealth, greater efficiency is exactly what is needed, at least so far as governments and insurers are concerned. Otherwise, rich societies may fail to cope with the needs of ageing and growing populations. An extra five minutes spent chatting with a patient is costly as well as valuable. The AI revolution will also enable managerial accountants to adjust and evaluate every aspect of treatment. The autonomy of the doctor will surely be weakened, especially, perhaps, in public-health systems which are duty-bound to cut unnecessary costs.
The Hippocratic Oath (誓言) holds that there is an art to medicine as well as a science and that "warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug". There's lots of sense in it: the patients of sympathetic physicians have been shown to recover better. Yet as the supply of human carers fails to satisfy the demand for health care, the future may involve consultations on smartphones and measurements monitored by chatbots. The considerately warmed stethoscope (听诊器), placed gently on a patient's back, may become a relic of the past.
