There are many challenging questions that need to be addressed when we discuss AI and the care of the patient. Doctors, despite what patients may hope, are not god. They are human. My book examines the physical and psychological limitations - the very human limitations - of doctor-mediated care. I ask, What are the problems with healthcare to which AI might be a solution. However, my book is not a love letter to technology either. i assess how good our technological work-arounds are, to the challenges with the time-limited, visit.
I also recognize that even if these human challenges are successfully addressed, AI presents new problems and dilemmas. This is what I write:
Other pressing considerations demand our gravest attention. They include: who should we trust to run our healthcare systems? Will it be tech giants like OpenAI and Google, whose algorithms are already shaping medical advice and decisions? Who or what should control our health data, and what happens to our privacy in the process? Just how secure is our most sensitive information from exploitation by bad actors? How do we ensure AI systems are reliable for all patients, in all parts of the world, not just a select few? What is the point in diagnostically accurate AI if patients lack basic utilities, electricity, or the medications to treat them? What measures do we use to offset the colossal energy demands on our planet of mass scale AI adoption in healthcare? And what happens to the people whose jobs go to Dr Bot?
It is my view that we can delay all of these conversations no longer.
Best regards
Charlotte
Charlotte Blease, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
<https://www.uu.se/en/contact-and-organisation/staff?query=N22-2764>,
Participatory eHealth & Health Data Research Group, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala Universitet; and Digital Psychiatry
<https://www.digitalpsych.org/people.html>, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
*Forthcoming book*: Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us and How AI Could Save Lives (Yale University Press, 2025) <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300247141>
*Recent Book*: "The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick" (Mayo Clinic Press 2024)
<https://www.amazon.com/Nocebo-Effect-When-Words-Make/dp/B0BQR6PLMY>
*Website:* www.charlotteblease.com
*Linkedin: *https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-blease-phd-207806134/
*X/Twitter:* @crblease
HIFA profile: Charlotte Blease is Associate Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden. Professional interests: AI in healthcare, ethics, psychotherapy, empathy, psychology of medical visits. Email address: charlotteblease AT gmail.com