INTEGRATING A.I. INTO MEDICAL PRACTICE. OPPORTUNITIES AND PERILS Part 1
Accepting uncertainty in the practice of medicine is the most difficult skill to master.
During my forty years of private practice of medicine, the most difficult problem for me was to accept uncertainty and to try to live with this uncomfortable feeling. I used to carry this uneasy feeling with me home. It interrupted my family life and my sleep so much so that at one point I almost decided to quit the practice of medicine.
I needed to have a mathematical certainty in my medical reasoning and decisions, which was not possible in practice of medicine for many reasons. They include:
- Practice of medicine is not an exact science. It is the combination of practicing of different medical sciences and medical arts.
- Medical practice involves too many variables and subjective decisions.
- Personality and education differences of doctors and patients influence the practice of medicine.
- Overwhelming and exponentially growing medical knowledge and information well above human cognitive ability to master and to apply in practice of medicine is becoming impossible.
- Every patient is genetically different, and they respond differently to the same medication. One size does not feet all in practice of medicine.
- Fear of malpractice lingers in the back of the mind of every practicing physician.
For all these reasons, after a while I thought medical uncertainty is and must be a part of the practice of medicine and try to learn how to live with this feeling of uncertainty. But my longing for certainty remained with me during my medical career. I yearned for and wanted a much more knowledgeable and experienced consultant to tell right on the spot that my medical decisions were correct, at the point of care. I also know that this was humanly impossible. But I remained optimistic. I though, may be in the future, the advancement in computer science and digital technology scientists will be able invent such a tool that all practicing doctors can use, and the feeling of uncertainty in the practice of medicine becomes a thing of the past.
