Artificial intelligence and diagnoses

Arizona residents may be interested in the claims of a tech entrepreneur who says that artificial intelligence will pay an increasing role in diagnosing patients’ conditions. This could be beneficial, as statistics show that medical errors kill far more people each year than do car accidents.

However, according to Vinod Khosla, a founding CEO of Sun Microsystems and now the head of Khosla Ventures, the problem is not just errors. There is so much information available that humans cannot process it as efficiently as machines can. As Khosla pointed out, AI can look at hundreds of biomarkers to diagnose a disease or can compare a patient with millions of others to find out who else has a certain condition.

Khosla foresees the roles of doctors and other medical professionals as shifting to explaining information to patients and offering emotional support. With AI diagnosing conditions, people with multiple complaints will no longer have to visit multiple specialists. A single doctor will be able to take the time to thoroughly educate patients about their condition.

It has been said that medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States, trailing only heart disease and cancer. Even if not fatal, these types of mistakes can lead to a worsened condition in a patient, resulting in the need for extensive medical care and treatment. Not every error constitutes malpractice, however. An attorney for a plaintiff will need to demonstrate that the health care practitioner or facility failed to exhibit the requisite standard of care. In order to do so, the attorney could obtain the opinions of medical experts.