How AI is transforming health care and what it means for the future

[0:00]Artificial intelligence is beginning to change the world of medicine for doctors and patients. But there are potential pitfalls. A new book takes a close look at all of this. It's called A Giant Leap, How AI is transforming health care and what it means for our future. The author, Dr. Robert Warter says we are entering a golden age of medicine. So go ahead, scan the QR code on your screen right now. We make it easy for you to buy it. Dr. Watertor is chief of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He joins us along with our guy Dr. John Lapo. Good morning to both of you. Good morning. All right, so what are some of the positive ways? Well, thank you. My post okay. You're good. Okay. All right. Because if not, I was going to use AI. Um all right, so what are some of the positive ways that AI is being used in medicine right now? Well, we're using it all the time. It's amazing. I'm using it to, if I was talking to you as a patient, I'd have my phone out here, it would create the documentation so I can look you in the eye. Uh we're looking at, we're using it to come up with diagnoses. Uh patients obviously are using it to come up with their own diagnoses, and I think overall, it's really quite positive. And and you know, people are worried about what are the what are the pitfalls, right? And speaking of pitfalls on the pit, you know, we have Patrick Ball coming up, right? There's an episode of The Pit. We love the pit. It's fantastic. Everybody should see it. Where there's there's a hack, and all the all the equipment including computers go down. So worst nightmare for doctors and patients. Well, we had to go back to when reminds us back of the day where we had that. We were medical students, so we know about that. They have to press hard in order to get the triplicates. But seriously, tell tell us what happens when you can you become too reliant on it? Well, we worry a lot about something called deskilling where people who used to be good at, for example, making a diagnosis or doing other things in medicine, aren't as good at it as they used to be because the AI takes over. So it's going to be a delicate balance. But the medical system is so screwed up. I mean, patients try to find a primary care doctor, try to find a a mental health professional. For us, try to get through a 600-page chart and review it in the two minutes we have. So, there are just so many wonderful things that AI can do in health care, and I'm a little bit worried about in the rest of life too. But in health care, I think the overall effect is going to be pretty positive. So there's ways that AI can help kind of streamline everything for for doctors and patients. But what about private health information? Yeah. How how does that play a role? Well, first of all, all of your health information is already in computers that are owned by companies. That's a good point. But it's a different issue to take all of that information and put it into uh one of the big AI engines. The big companies are saying they're going to keep it private. I sort of trust them on that because it's in their corporate interest to do that. Why do you say sort to trust? Well, because you're giving them a lot of your data and they are saying we're not going to use it for training our models. I'd be a little careful with anything that I absolutely would not want to be public, but I do think that the AI will give you a better answer if it knows that you have a history of diabetes or a history of high cholesterol or family history of heart disease. Putting it all together, somebody comes in, you know, there's information from here and there and all different doctors. having it all available in one place and saying, hey, did you know that that person just went to Malaysia and then maybe they have this, that and the other thing. I do, of course, you and I both have both excitement and, you know, we want to be cautious about cautiously optimistic. There are things that a computer, that AI simply can't do like, for example, this. It can't do this. And a couple of years ago, a woman who I've known 30 years came into my office and she said, hi. I said, what's the matter? And she burst into tears. Her whole life was falling apart. And when she stopped crying, she said, how did you know? I go, it was too big of a high. That's not your normal high. So, how well can AI know, I can imagine they can with maybe audio and visual that it could say, well, you know, compared to the last 10 visits, your voice is a little bit more tense and the little message says, you might inquire about anxiety. But adjust that. I think that's a tension that that I believe that there's a lot that doctors do today that AI can do effectively and safely. I don't think you're going to see a doctor to get your weight loss medicine or get your cholesterol or your blood pressure treated. On the other hand, I don't want to hear from a bot that I have cancer or or or for a bot to decide, do I need surgery or not or chemotherapy or not. So, it's one of the tricky things we have to do to try to figure out what are the things that are uniquely human and make sure the human still do that. I mean, I don't think a bot is going to be able to do what you did with that with your patient. You know, you both are spot on. Here's a moment of transparency for me. I went in and and got my colonoscopy done, and afterwards, you put your hand on my shoulder and telling me you have made the a proper step into the future of your health. Absolutely. There is one thing that we know we can cross off the list for now. And hearing those words, it gave me such a peace of mind. I went home and repeated that to my wife, and I can't get that from an AI. Yeah. Yeah, and you know what else was in part of that colonoscopy, Nate? AI was looking over my shoulder. Huh? So, there are very subtle pops called flat pops, right? It's it's easy if it's a stock and a mushroom, you anybody can see it. There are flat ones and looking over my shoulders AI, when it sees one of these subtle pops, it goes, ding. Little bit of a square around it, and did you see that? Sometimes it sees it before I see it. So the future is bright between doctors and AI and patients. And I think so, but I think we're going to have to figure out who does what and make sure that we have it organized in the best way. AI can help the colonoscopy, help the patient discussion, but we got to get the balance right. Dr. Robert Warter, thank you so much. Dr. John Lupo appreciate you. That's right. All right, to buy a giant leap scan the QR code on your screen right now. It's available.