Artificial Intelligence and Personalized Medicine
The Hippocratic oath states: “first do no harm.” In today’s era of personalized medicine, we are trying to uphold this oath, but we also break it. Modern medicine has moved away from this oath in many ways.
But new technologies that enable personalized medicine to health will be the key to making Hippocrates’ vision come true.
Physicians today focus on specific diagnoses and specialized treatments, both of which were espoused by the Knidian school. This shift in medical thought since Hippocrates’ day has caused serious criticism over the past two millennia, with the passivity of Hippocratic treatment being the subject of particularly strong denunciations; for example, the French doctor M. S. Houdart called the Hippocratic treatment a “meditation upon death”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates
What is personalized medicine?
Does that mean it’s intended for use by one person, based on his or her requirements and preferences?
Personalized medicine, also known as precision medicine, is a procedure that separates patients into different groups — with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease. The terms personalized medicine, Personalized healthcare, precision medicine, stratified medicine, and P4 medicine are used interchangeably to describe this concept.
It’s also important to understand population-based healthcare. This is a fundamental notion in the managed-care system. The American Medical Association described population-based healthcare as an approach “that allows one to assess the health status and health needs of a target population, implement and evaluate interventions that are designed to improve the health of that population, and efficiently and effectively provide care for members of that population in a way that is consistent with the community’s cultural, policy, and health resource values.” However, Healthcare professionals no longer seem afraid that this approach offers a “one-size-fits-all” or “cookie-cutter” insensitivity to patients’ individual needs. Consultant Peter Boland wrote in the mid-1990s, it “does not detract from individuality but rather adds another dimension, as individuals benefit from the guidelines developed for the populations to which they belong.”
The Advantages of Population-Based Care
What are the main advantages of a population-based approach to healthcare?
Can it improve the health of the entire human population and not just certain individuals?
This model of care has been described as consisting of three components: health outcomes, patterns of health determinants, and policies and interventions.
But what limitations does population healthcare have?
One problem with it is that some people will always be excluded from the care plan. The social determinants of health (SDOH) are linked to the economic and social conditions and their distribution among the population that influence individual and group differences in health status. They are health-promoting factors found in one’s living and working conditions (such as the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual risk factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics) that influence the risk for a disease, or vulnerability to disease or injury. According to some viewpoints, the distributions of social determinants are shaped by public policies that reflect the influence of prevailing political ideologies of those governing a jurisdiction.
What is good about personalized healthcare?
Tailoring treatment to patients dates back at least to the time of Hippocrates, and the term has been used more recently because of the growth of new diagnostic and informatics approaches that provide an understanding of the molecular basis of disease, particularly genomics.
What other limitations exist in a population-based approach to healthcare?
Patients are sometimes denied treatments because decisions made about the care plan are based on averages looking at large populations of people, which makes it more difficult for the consumer to get healthcare that is tailored to him or her.
To achieve personalized healthcare, the most important determinants will be our educational level as a society and our proficiency with advanced technologies that can extend the reach and the quality of care to the largest number of patients possible.
The population model of delivering care is a cost-effective model, and it is quick to respond to immediate healthcare needs across all socioeconomic levels and under certain situations, It is the most practical method to deliver care to every individual member within the selected community, but it fails to create treatment options that are customizable depending on the patient and his or her individual needs.
Why Now is the Time for Personalized Care
Technology has finally matured to the point that we can make personalized medicine delivery a reality for the first time. Virtual reality, automation, remote diagnostic systems, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are the tools we will use to deliver the highest quality of care than the world has known before.
But we will need to combine these technologies with human expertise because true quality healthcare will always depend not just upon advanced tools but the human touch. This is especially true as we extend quality care to the developing world.
One f the most powerful technologies at our disposal is Artificial intelligence (AI), computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
There is a misconception among the general population, as well as among healthcare providers, that artificial intelligence will diagnose diseases without any human intervention making everyone to rush towards that point quickly. Unfortunately, this has created more resistance from the healthcare community, and many don’t understand what artificial intelligence can do for us and how useful it can be.
How AI Can Improve Healthcare Delivery
Artificial intelligence can help doctors and patients, but it can never replace doctors. Artificial intelligence requires computers to learn like humans in order to help us solve problems. Data gathering and analytics are very tech-intensive processes that require time, scope and diversity.
So, where does AI still need to improve in order to offer real solutions? Current solutions put the cart before the horse. There is a myth in the tech community that AI will be able to diagnose diseases. It is not true But AI will be able to help us extend diagnostics, and help doctors quickly rule out certain diseases as they make diagnoses. Artificial intelligence will help us incorporate data from multiple locations and help physicians utilize this in differential diagnostic workups.
To realize the full potential of this technology, we need to first create the right environment. This requires active participation, design, and interoperability. It is a journey, not a destination. Today we have the technology, strategy, and resources. But we still need independent thinking, a forward-looking attitude and a sense of responsibility toward patient empowerment.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning should be viewed as “the shadow” of a procedure and a user. Alongside human expertise, AI can fulfill tasks and prevent errors that are most common among all people. And AI can continue to evolve for years through blockchain technology.
Machine learning and the human touch will be complementary as we develop a better healthcare system that works for more patients. The technology combines with human expertise will make care more affordable, and more easily available.
When this comes to pass, we really will be living up to the Hippocratic oath once again.
