The new book by Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute, a geneticist and author of several books on the future of healthcare, is definitely against the tide on fears of using artificial intelligence in medicine.
The book starts from the consideration that medicine has become inhumane, with disastrous effects. The doctor-patient relationship–the heart of medicine–is broken, doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound.
In Deep Medicine, the author reveals how artificial intelligence has the potential to transform everything doctors do, from notetaking and medical scans to diagnosis and treatment, greatly cutting down the cost of medicine and reducing human mortality. AI will create space for the real healing that takes place between a doctor who can listen and a patient who needs to be heard.
Dr. Topol is convinced that artificial intelligence will never completely replace doctors, but that it can make a decisive contribution to improving medicine, helping doctors to re-establish the empathy that has been lost over time.
The book, currently only in English, is really interesting and worth reading. For those who want to know more, I report an interview by Angela Chen, on The Verge, which you can read here.
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