Pranav Rajpurkar and Eric J. Topol. NY Times Feb 2, 2025: The Robot Doctor Will See You Now
An excerpt:
“The medical community largely anticipated that combining the abilities of doctors and A.I. would be the best of both worlds, leading to more accurate diagnoses and more efficient care…That assumption might prove to be incorrect. A growing body of research suggests that A.I. is outperforming doctors, even when they use it as a tool…
Simply giving physicians A.I. tools and expecting automatic improvements doesn’t work. Physicians aren’t completely comfortable with A.I. and still doubt its utility, even if it could demonstrably improve patient care…
Medical training will need to adapt to help doctors understand not just how to use A.I., but when to rely on it and when to trust their own judgment…But the promise for patients is obvious: fewer bottlenecks, shorter waits and potentially better outcomes. For doctors, there’s potential for A.I. to alleviate the routine burdens so that health care might become more accurate, efficient and — paradoxically — more human.”
In a related Substack article (open access: Opinion | When A.I. Alone Outperforms the Human-A.I. Partnership), Dr. Topol and Dr. Rajpurkar list several studies showing that AI alone may be better than physicians with AI under some circumstances:
My take (borrowed from the authors): “The future of medicine won’t be shaped by a simple choice between human or artificial intelligence, but by our ability to understand their respective strengths and limitations, and to orchestrate their collaboration in ways that truly benefit patient care.”
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