Physicians Need Artificial Intelligence -- But Only If It Fixes What's Broken

Artificial intelligence (AI) for healthcare providers is currently at the peak of inflated expectations, according to Gartner's recently published "Hype Cycle for Healthcare Providers, 2019." This is not a surprising conclusion, given the industry's ongoing claims about disruptive AI-based solutions that will transform healthcare. When you start reading about how "ambient AI" is going to see and hear everything that is going on in an exam room and somehow magically convert that to usable data for analytics and machine learning, you should be very skeptical. This misplaced dream of an all-knowing, all-seeing machine is holding developers back from addressing the real problem: giving clinicians tools they can use at the point of care today. Before we defer to Dr. Alexa for all our healthcare needs, let's first consider what type of AI innovations have the potential to improve healthcare efficiencies -- and which functions don't address what's really broken in healthcare.