How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Healthcare

In “How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Healthcare”, Bernard Merr discusses what artificial intelligence does, and how it can benefit medicine. The use of artificial intelligence can create different health outcomes because it has access to more information. A doctor will not remember everything that they learned while in school, and has a brief window of time to spend with the patient and diagnose them. In addition, doctors are not always on top of all the new medical findings. Artificial intelligence contains access to all medical information, and has databases to reference back to all of the patient’s past medical history. With the information that artificial intelligence has, it may be possible for it to give a more accurate diagnosis than a doctor who is skimming the intake notes for the patient. Also, artificial intelligence could potentially be easier to access than doctors with the extended periods patients have to wait to get an appointment or where they live geographically. 

Manifest functions of using artificial intelligence in medicine are that it has access to past and new medical information. It knows everything about medicine and is up-to-date. Latent functions are the convenience that comes with its use. If you go to the doctors and they do not get the diagnosis correct, you have to keep going back to the doctor until the correct diagnosis and treatment is found. With artificial intelligence, it can minimize the back and forth because it is preloaded with lots of information that will potentially be able to find the issue faster.

I think that we should implement artificial intelligence into medicine. I don’t think that it should replace doctors because doctor patient interactions are still important, but I think it can be used as a resource. I think it could be used to help doctors with potential diagnoses for the patient, and the doctor could use the suggested diagnoses to figure out what the patient has, what diagnostics to run, and how to treat it.