Physicians and other health care professionals are uniquely suited to understand artificial intelligence. They’ve studied or routinely use mathematics, data analysis, and algorithms. They comprehend pattern recognition, decision trees, rules-base…
Category: Tech
Will blockchain become the coin of the medical realm?
First, there was Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that utilizes blockchain, a decentralized system of data collection and transactions that we are told will defy hacking. (Wasn’t the Titanic said to be unsinkable?) We read that cryptocurrency and other blockc…
Understanding 6 trends shaping health care through gastroenterology
If you throw a pebble today, it’s likely to land on an article that talks about how artificial intelligence and its brother — machine learning — are changing health care. Yes, I get it broadly. But I was curious to explore how exactly health care…
How telemedicine is increasing diversity in clinical trials
An important part of advancing medical research and drug development is making participation in clinical trials easier and more inclusive. To develop treatments that work on men, women, and children of all ages and different ethnicities we need to have…
What if EMRs can never capture the clinical experience?
Apocryphal story from residency: On morning rounds in the critical care unit, the post-call resident starts to present a complicated patient admitted overnight with chest pain, and after the first bits of the history have been presented, the wise old c…
The truth about artificial intelligence in medicine
For many months, artificial intelligence has been in my peripheral vision, just sitting there, ignored by me because it seemed too far in the future to be interesting now. And then, there were all these terms — Big Data, machine learning, data science …
How telemedicine can help patients and solve physician burnout
I have been practicing telemedicine successfully for four years. In 2015, I had to beg doctors to work in telemedicine. Because so many doctors were wary of it, I started to get licensed in multiple states, and now, I have 15 state licenses. Well, what…
Apple, PC, HD, DM: No, we’re talking about health care
I was in the hospital when I heard the word “apple.” Without hesitating, I reached into my pocket to see if I had my phone. But the person speaking was referring to the fruit, not the product. This got me thinking: “Has technology and our products n…
A new health care dawn is coming
At some point in my career, I had the crazy idea that if I could scale the patient-centric work I was doing in my community at a small rural hospital — then I could make more of an impact. This is why, when a technology company came calling, dangling a…
What physicians can learn from anthropologists
Since the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, it has been said that health tech would dramatically revolutionize health care and the patient experience. Advocates have claimed time and tim…
