Books 2021: Deep Medicine
Deep Medicine by Eric Topol
State of medicine today paints a picture that is rushed, mechanical and very little ‘care’ that the sick and ailing are seeking. This forced attitude in medicine leads to shallow decision making, even when all the evidence was right there, out in the open, waiting to be seen.
Numerous medical decisions are made using images (radiology etc.) while some seem just beyond any patterns. Eric Topol ’s Deep Medicine sets out to explore where AI can be employed in making medical sciences whole again.
Medical personnel today work under a lot of pressure with very little time to reason with cases. With no access to readily available historical medical data, diagnosis and prognosis suffers heavily. AI — ML comes with many promises and shortcomings. Activities that involve data-driven decision making can make good use of the AI — ML paradigm. Radiology and imaging is one of the key areas to look forward to here. Questions will however remain in more complex areas like surgery and other diagnostic processes that require specialist reasoning based on retrospective data.
Artificial Intelligence has already made substantial inroads into drug discovery and neuroscience. Ability to decode diseases at a genetic level and analyze them presents possibilities. AI has the potential to transform the hard pressed health care sector and give the professionals a much needed breather.
We already have diet recommenders helping humans lead a healthier life. Perhaps with the growing assistance from AI, doctors and medical staff will get the opportunity to bring back the much lacking empathy to medicine.
(PS: this is a personal interpretation of the facts presented by the author)