Artificial intelligence could transform healthcare, but we need to accept it first

But efforts to use artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data in healthcare contexts have not been uncontroversial. On the one hand there is wild enthusiasm – lives saved by data, new medical breakthroughs, and a world of personalised medicine tailored to meet our needs by deep learning algorithms fed by smartphones and FitBit wearables. Too often the debate dissolves into anecdote rather than science, or focuses on the breakthrough rather than the hard slog that led to it. Of course the reality will be somewhere in the middle.