High Hopes for “Deep Medicine”? AI, Economics, and the Future of Care

Abstract

In the much‐celebrated book Deep Medicine, Eric Topol argues that the development of artificial intelligence for health care will lead to a dramatic shift in the culture and practice of medicine. In the next several decades, he suggests, AI will become sophisticated enough that many of the everyday tasks of physicians could be delegated to it. Topol is perhaps the most articulate advocate of the benefits of AI in medicine, but he is hardly alone in spruiking its potential to allow physicians to dedicate more of their time and attention to providing empathetic care for their patients in the future. Unfortunately, several factors suggest a radically different picture for the future of health care. Far from facilitating a return to a time of closer doctor‐patient relationships, the use of medical AI seems likely to further erode therapeutic relationships and threaten professional and patient satisfaction.

Operationalising ethics in artificial intelligence for healthcare: a framework for AI developers

“…Apply human-centered approaches and keep Explainability to (potentially impacted) humans in mind [118,119] 12. Keep humans in the loop to achieve ethical model training and desired ethical outcomes [120,121] 13. Adhere to interpretability based on regulatory and efficiency demands and users' needs [118,119,[122][123][124][125] 14.…”

Diachronic and synchronic variation in the performance of adaptive machine learning systems: the ethical challenges

“…29,30 However, the various tasks associated with maintaining AI and ML systems could equally lead to increased administrative burdens for clinicians that could further interfere with the quality of care and empathy in the doctor-patient relationship. 31,32 This risk seems particularly acute in the case of MAMLS, because healthcare institutions will likely need to significantly expand the scope of their data collection policies and procedures to be able to provide the continuous stream of new data that training MAMLS will require.…”

Krankenhausgewinne – Ethische Aspekte an der Schnittstelle zwischen Medizin und Ökonomie

“…Be-schädigung des Patientenwohls nicht mehr möglich ist. Zusätzlich bleibt abzuwarten, ob die derzeit diskutierten digitalmedizintechnologisch induzierte Produktivitätssprünge [71][72][73] zukünftig tatsächlich für die Krankenhäuser eintreten, und deren Gewinnbestrebungen unterstützen können.…”