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Investigating where AI would be in five years time...

In my DGST 101 class, I was asked to choose one hypothetical scenario, investigating where AI would be in five years time…

Scenario of Choice: “By the year 2029… an AI-powered telehealth app will gain legal permission to prescribe medication.”

Locating Experts:

The first requirement to help me extend my understanding and data was to locate some experts on this particular topic.

I ended up finding two articles written by experts on the subject, both articles equally made strong claims on the future of generative AI in the healthcare system. These experts explain how useful AI is in the medical field and how successful it is to this day. It is constantly helping doctors diagnose illness, keeping track of health problems before they happen, and speeding up making new medicines. However, the given hypothetical scenario is actually prescribing medicine to patients, which has not happened yet in our world as of 2024.

However, both articles point to AI being able to prescribe medicines in the near future. While this idea can be risky, the main goal is to use AI to help patients get better care quicker, and of course, to stay healthy.

I then wrote my article discussing the topic…

AI Literacy: AI-powered telehealth app

By Ashley McMellon

Scenario:

By the year 2029, an AI-powered telehealth app will gain legal permission to prescribe medication.

What do the experts say?

“AI systems learn by processing huge volumes of data, something health-care providers have in abundance… It may already be speeding the time it takes for new drugs to reach clinical trials.”

“The AI Doctor Will See You… Eventually.” The Economist, 27 Mar. 2024, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/03/27/the-ai-doctor-will-see-youeventually.

In summary, this article talks about the prediction of how AI can make a big difference in the healthcare industry. It says that AI can help doctors diagnose illnesses better by giving personalized care to each individual patient. AI can also find new medicines faster, and make hospitals run more smoothly/quickly/efficiently. The article also says that using AI in healthcare could save a lot of money and help more people get better health care. But like everything, there are always challenges to making this happen. The article discusses how both companies and governments need to work together to make sure AI is safe and works well before trusting it with healthcare. They also need to figure out how to pay for it and how to make sure everyone can access it safely and efficiently. The experts that wrote this article fully believe that AI could change healthcare for the better if everyone works together to make it happen.

“An AI could also analyze large numbers of EHRs to predict which patients will benefit most from a particular treatment and which may have adverse reactions to a treatment option. We’re not quite there yet—work remains to be done to make data from EHRs interoperable and accessible for this kind of analysis. But as we move into a more data-driven future, AIs could prove to be invaluable for diagnosis and treatment recommendations.”

Battelle. “The Algorithm is in: 5 Ways AI is Transforming Medicine.” Inside Battelle, https://inside.battelle.org/blog-details/the-algorithm-is-in-5-ways-ai-is-transforming-medicine?keyword_session_id=vt~adwords%7Ckt~%7Cmt~b%7Cta~5327679944340289707&_vsrefdom=wordstream&source=google&medium=cpc&term=&creative=496274902983&campaign=Brand-Digital-Search-Ads-DSA-Grant&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6uWyBhD1ARIsAIMcADo40Jf_Jl3sI4J_x9Gn0TStxHLdsLxuVtbYMJ1bvECOHefN4On_V0QaAnx6EALw_wcB

This second article talks about how AI can change how doctors and healthcare facilities work. If AI were in the healthcare systems, it could help doctors find diseases faster by looking at medical images and patient records quickly. It could also potentially predict health problems before they happen by analyzing data from devices that monitor patients, as well as help identify harmful germs by studying their genes. AI can/has even helped people with paralysis move their limbs by reading signals from their brains!

The article then goes on to talk about how AI speeds up the process of creating new drugs by studying their structures and how they work. This can save time and money in drug development, which would change our future healthcare industries drastically.

Overall, AI is already making healthcare better by improving diagnosis, predicting health issues, creating drugs faster, and finding new treatments for diseases. The experts in this article are part of something called Battelle, which is a group that works on medical problems. They are considered experts because they’ve made and used AI tools before, so they know what they’re talking about when it comes to AI and healthcare.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, both articles equally make strong claims on the future of generative AI in the healthcare system. Both explain how AI is useful in the medical field and how it is already being used today. It helps doctors diagnose illness, keeps track of health problems before they happen, and speeds up making new medicines. In the future, AI might even be able to prescribe medicines too. While this idea can be risky, the main goal is to use AI to help patients get better care quicker, and of course, to stay healthy. Overall, AI is changing our future for the better.

Choice of Question: I chose a question where we need experts to explain what they think will or should happen. I agree with these experts, and that if we increase our AI’s database enough, we should be able to trust it prescribing our medicine to us.

Clarity of Explanation: In my brief summary of the proposed scenario, I am certainly conveying the ideas and predictions my experts provided. I agree with everything they said in their articles, and reading it made me more excited to learn and discuss the greater and endless possibilities of AI in the medical field.

Quality of Sourcing: I do believe I provided sufficient evidence that the experts I cited are truly speaking from a position of authority because they are a part of something called Battelle, (a group that works on medical problems.) They have used AI tools before in the healthcare industry.