i n n o vat i o n s
Precision medicine. When machines become smarter than doctors In order to even begin fixing it, healthcare requires honesty. And today, we finally have access to tools such as artificial intelligence, which make it possible to avoid diagnostic and medical errors. Humans often make mistakes, but AI rarely does. Ashamed of imperfection A doctor’s diagnosis may be wrong. And, just like in the case of other industries, it sometimes is. The problem is, however, that in the case of healthcare, this topic is a taboo that most people tend to avoid like fire. This is a mistake. Although
18
OSOZ World 2020
medicine requires precision, no doctor is an infallible oracle. Several years of studies, which are followed by long internships, are an unquestionably rigorous training process for anyone who would like to protect the lives and well-being of others. From the very onset of their ca-
reers, such people follow the Hippocratic oath and do everything in their power to help those in need, and, above all, do no harm. The fact that the outcomes of their actions are sometimes far from those intended is a result of inherent human weaknesses that no person can escape, i.e. the limited capacity regarding memorising and processing information, as well as making biased decisions, and, occasionally, being guided by the wrong principles. In healthcare, this may lead to severe errors, the scale of which largely remain unknown. We only ever rely on estimates: 1,500,000 people died worldwide due
