In the modern epoch of digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI) is widely utilized in education, transportation, media, banking, navigation, and healthcare. In the context of health services, the most substantial influence by AI is experienced by clinicians. However, the role of AI is ambiguous because it brings both positive and negative effects. The present essay analyzes how AI alters the work of clinicians and discusses its advantageous and disadvantageous effects.
The primary positive effect of AI is that it economizes clinicians’ time and, hence, increases their productivity. More precisely, AI algorithms can examine a patient and diagnosis him much faster than a real doctor because of the ability to identify a wide range of biomarkers that characterize various illnesses. In other words, it replaces the necessity of clinicians manual work and significantly speeds up the process of making a diagnosis. In this case, healthcare professionals benefit from integration with AI because it enables them to take care of more patients and dedicate more time to people with more complex illnesses.
At the same time, the application of AI raises a question of reliability. From one point of view, AI is an algorithm that analyzes a vast database to come to a conclusion in each particular case. People cannot process big data and, hence, AI copes with this function more efficiently in contrast to clinicians. Besides, AI can work clockwise and does not suffer from burnouts and fatigue (Asan et al., 2020). From another point of view, even though AI is not a human, its outcomes still could be biased. This problem could be provoked by the improper training of AI with “insufficient and subjective data from multiple sources” (Asan et al., 2020, p. 3). From this, it could be inferred that even though technology is our future, it cannot be blindly trusted, and clinicians are still of paramount importance in the caregiving and treatment of patients.
Reference
Asan, O., Bayrak, A. E., & Choudhury, A. (2020). Artificial intelligence and human trust in healthcare: Focus on clinicians. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(6), e15154.