Physician and AI

Looking Forward to Thailand's Destiny "Physician and AI"

Prof.Dr.Suchatvee Suwansawat, the Speaker of Council of University Presidents of Thailand

My parents at the ages of 81 always wake up very early at about 3 or 4 am. to go to hospital for early queue reservation of regular healthcare almost every week. It is because the older, the riskier of being sickening. Early healthcare queue reservation has been a long traditional common behavior for Thai whenever having been sick.

We hope that someday we must hardly go to hospital, never spend time all day long, and have the best doctor completely cure our sickness. In the past, such the dream was really far from the truth, but today when the world is going into the age of AI or Artificial Intelligence it is possible to mention that every career may be applicably replaced with intelligent computers and robots, without exception of the doctor.

At the MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the best specialized hospitals in the world, in Houston, Texas, USA, it has been cooperatively working with Watson Computers, the IBM's great artificial intelligence, on data processing of over 100,000 patients to analyze and diagnose the sickness to provide the best individual appropriate treatments; medicine, chemotherapy, and operation normally must be done by physicians, sometimes maybe apply the way of trial and error, till the right way can be approved; it could be risky treatment or unsuccessful way of complete curing.

At the Mayo Clinic, the best medical center at Minnesota State Medica Center, the AI has been developed to diagnose the tendency of serious cardiac disease actually the patients usually need to be drilled through the chest to check for heart tissue. The AI coud help to reduce the risk of treatment and the patients would never hurt. In addition, an article in the famous New England Journal of Medicine stated that current AI could accurately identify tumors from X-rays because of the information in the database of millions of nematodes named
Medline has collected over 5,600 medical journals, of which hundreds of research topics were published and no one could read all of them; however, the AI could intelligently learn every line. such example was only part of the miracle that the AI can be taking on a medical role.
Imaginarily, for one doctor able to completely treat ten thousand patients a year, it must spend ten years long to create a diagnostic experience, but for the algorithm of the AI, it could learn and memorize millions of patient information in only few seconds; leading to the most appropriate diagnosis and treatment. For the fact that all data can be packaged onto the cloud and downloaded to the smartphone to be used as needed.  The smartphone is also now can be knowing the behavior of consumers, the ways of working, measure pressure, measure the pulse, sleeping time counting, measure body temperature, then why the ways to forecast the risk of any disease is not sure.
The AI also warns before the disease. Today, we were forced to use a mobile phone able to respond, it can say or command to "No, eat." "Sleep now." "Go home." "Take a pill ... 2 tablets after the meal.".. it could help us not to go to hospital unnecessarily.
Do we need a doctor more? No one may find the correct answer. Even the doctor's career for the next 10 years may not be the same fashion, the necessity of the doctor's must continue, but the context of the profession would be changing to cooperatively work with computers and AI unseparately.
That's because robot ways may be more accurate than the human’s one without fatigue. It is difficult to get patients into the operating room without a doctor’s assisting, or the AI can identify the tumor accurately than any doctor. However, no one may feel good enough if there is no doctor present to explain how good or bad the treatment details are to patients.
Are we ready to produce doctors of new generation to be compatible with AI plus robot cooperation medical treatment?