A visit to a physician these days is cold: physicians spend most of their time typing at
computers making minimal eye contact. Appointments generally last only a few minutes with
scarce time for the doctor to connect to a patient's story or explain how and why different
procedures and treatments might be undertaken. As a result errors abound: indeed misdiagnosis
is the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States trailing only heart disease cancer
and stroke. This is because despite having access to more resources than ever doctors are
vulnerable not just to the economic demand to see more patients but to distraction burnout
data overload and their own intrinsic biases. Physicians are simply overmatched. As Eric Topol
argues in Deep Medicine artificial intelligence can help. Natural-language processing could
automatically record notes from our doctor visits virtual psychiatrists could better predict
the risk of suicide or other mental health issues for vulnerable patients deep-learning
software will make every physician a master diagnostician and we could even use smartphone
apps to take our own medical selfies for skin exams and receive immediate analysis. . On top of
that the virtual smartphone assistants of today--Alexa Siri Cortana--could analyze our daily
health data to reduce the need for doctor visits and trips to the emergency room and support
for people suffering from asthma epilepsy and heart disease. By integrating tools like these
into their daily medical practice doctors would be able to spend less time collecting and
cataloging information and more time providing thorough intimate and meaningful care for
their patients as no machine can. Artificial intelligence can also help remedy the
debilitating cost of healthcare both for individuals and the economy writ large. The medical
sector now absorbs 20 percent of the US gross domestic product--it is largest sector by dollars
and jobs. And it's very inefficient. Take the cost of medical scans: There are over 20 million
medical scans performed in the US every day and an MRI for example costs hundreds to
thousands of dollars. AI could process 260 million medical scans (more than 2 weeks' worth) in
less than 24 hours for a cost of only $1000. We pay billions and billions of dollars for the
same work today. The American health care system needs a serious reboot and artificial
intelligence is just the thing to press the restart button. As innovative as it is hopeful
Deep Medicine ultimately shows us how we can leverage artificial intelligence for better care
at lower costs with more empathy for the benefit of patients and physicians alike.
