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Think about the last time you felt let down by the health care system. You probably don’t have to go back far. In wealthy countries around the world, medical systems that were once robust are now crumbling. Doctors and nurses, tasked with an ever expanding range of responsibilities, are busier than ever, which means they have less and less time for patients. In the United States, the average doctor’s appointment lasts seven minutes. In South Korea, it’s only two.
Without sufficient time and attention, patients are suffering. There are 12 million significant misdiagnoses in the US every year, and 800,000 of those result in death or disability. (While the same kind of data isn’t available in Canada, similar trends are almost certainly happening here as well).
Eric Topol says medicine has become decidedly inhuman – and the consequences have been disastrous. Topol is a cardiologist and one of the most widely cited medical researchers in the world. In his latest book, Deep Medicine, he argues that the best way to make health care human again is to embrace the inhuman, in the form of artificial intelligence.
Mentioned
“Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again” by Eric Topol
“Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
“The frequency of diagnostic errors in outpatient care: estimations from three large observational studies involving US adult populations” by H. Singh, A. Meyer, E. Thomas
“Burden of serious harms from diagnostic error in the USA” by David Newman-Toker, et al.
“How Expert Clinicians Intuitively Recognize a Medical Diagnosis” by J. Brush Jr, J. Sherbino, G. Norman
“GraphCast: AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting” from Google DeepMind
“A Randomized Controlled Study of Art Observation Training to Improve Medical Student Ophthalmology Skills” by Jaclyn Gurwin, et al.
“Why Doctors Should Organize” by Eric Topol
“How This Rural Health System Is Outdoing Silicon Valley” by Erika Fry
“The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care” by Eric Topol
“The Patient Will See You Now” by Eric Topol
Further reading
“The Importance Of Being” by Abraham Verghese