What if AI makes doctors dumber?

AI is supposed to make doctors "smarter" i.e. helping them make better decisions that result in better outcomes.. But every decision, particularly medical diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, are a bet based on judgment and probability.

How AI will break the rules of medicine .

Doctors make decisions, perform procedures, and communicate with patients and their caregivers.

So, what can we do to prevent the rise of Homo Appiens?

Some experts suggest that we need to find a balance between relying on machines and using our own cognitive abilities. Others argue that we need to teach critical thinking skills in schools and encourage people to take a more active role in their decision-making. Still, others believe that we need to slow down the development of AI and take a more cautious approach to its adoption. Whatever the solution may be, one thing is clear: we can't afford to become too dependent on machines. We need to preserve our own cognitive abilities and retain our autonomy as thinking beings. Otherwise, we may find ourselves becoming more machine-like than human, with all the limitations that entails. In the words of a modern-day Descartes, "AI thinks, therefore we are becoming dumber."

How do we prevent those who do procedures from losing their skills?

"Flying the plane" in the OR has become increasingly automated and, like the airline issue, it raises important questions about how we educate and train future surgeons, anesthesiologists and surgical teams. Yes, surgical simulators are more common but cannot duplicate all situations. The use of robotic devices challenges the conventional see one, do one, teach one surgical training model. The internet of medical things, using multiple medical devices and monitors in the OR, presents its own challenges.

Vall d’Hebron University Hospital achieved a double milestone in the field of lung transplants . For the first time ever, a lung has been transplanted using a minimally invasive technique that entails the use of robotic surgery. Also, a new access route has been created through which diseased lungs can be removed and the new lungs can be inserted.

In a high-tech lab on Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus in Baltimore, engineers have been building a robot that may be able to stitch back together the broken vessels in your belly and at some point maybe your brain, no doctor needed

Every surgical specialty accreditation group defines the numbers and types of procedures a trainee is required to do and demonstrate competency doing it by the end of their training to be eligible to sit for board accreditation exams. However, the system in not foolproof, is poorly tracked and subject to "the luck of the draw" when it comes to how many of a given case an applicant has done and whether they have done it as the operating surgeon (sitting in the left seat) or as an assistant (co-pilot). Flying solo on a surgical robot is different than doing a procedure with an experienced attending holding your hands. It is also a self reporting and tracking system by each applicant and thus subject to mistakes, fraud or abuse

How do we prevent doctors from not improving their communication and other durable skills given that medical education is soft on the soft skills.

A new study finds that chatbots are just as accurate and far more empathetic than doctors at answering basic patient questions.

We have also dumbed down what we call "innovation".

Recently I've observed that people label anything that is new or old done in a new way as innovative whether it results in multiples of user defined value or not. But dumbing down the definition:

1. Is misleading to stakeholders and creators
2. Understates the challenge of creating something that has impactful multiples of stakeholder defined value when compared to a competitive offering or the status quo
3. Confuses innovation with an idea with a discovery, invention, or incremental improvement
4. Lowers the bar at a time when we need true innovations to fix many broken systems and solve multiple wicked problems
5. Reinforces the problem of creating solutions looking for a problem
6. Wastes resources, time, and energy and becomes innovation theater
7. Can be fraudulent or deceptive
8. Does not achieve the sextuple aim
9. Does not bend the sick care cost curve, predicted to increase by over 60% in the next 5 years to over $7T
10. Lowers organizational innovation objectives, benchmarks, and milestones
11. Ignores how long it takes for something to be recognized as innovative
12. Overstates the short-term impact and understates the unpredictable long-term value
13. Hard evidence that directly ties digital and AI transformation to improvements in operational KPIs and financial performance is scant.
14. Ignores the cost-benefit and comparative cost effectiveness of simpler solutions
15. Is not equitably accessible and so increases inequality

The fee for service sick, sick care system of systems pays doctors to do things. When machines can do those things, what do we do with all those cash cow doctors? What will patients do?

The medical education establishment is struggling to create graduates who can win the fifth industrial revolution. Unless they figure out what business they are in and adapt, the medical school bubble will pop sooner than later and knowledge robot technicians will be the new MBAs.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack