AI is becoming a bigger part of our daily lives, including in the workforce. We see robots working in grocery stores and factories and even helping with simple tasks like answering questions or organizing schedules. Some people depend on AI for almost everything they do. But could AI ever take over something as important as the medical field?
Medicine is known for its long years of school, difficult jobs, and big responsibilities. Could AI reduce the need for so much training and work? While AI will never fully replace doctors and nurses, it can help them.
AI can assist with diagnosing diseases, reading medical scans, and keeping track of health records. It can also take care of repetitive tasks like filling out paperwork and writing prescriptions, which gives doctors more time to focus on their patients. AI is also useful in medical research, helping scientists discover new medicines and treatments by analyzing large amounts of data.
However, AI will never be able to replace the human side of medicine. Doctors and nurses have important skills like empathy, critical thinking, and compassion. AI might be able to predict the best treatment, but it can’t comfort a scared patient or make complex ethical decisions.
According to Kellogg Insight, AI could improve healthcare in two major ways:
- Treatment Planning – AI can study patient data to find patterns in symptoms, genetics, and treatments. Kellogg explains, “The software could extract patterns from electronic records of previous patients’ characteristics, genetic variations, symptoms, treatment, and health outcomes. Based on a new patient’s similarities to past cases, the AI program might be able to predict the most effective drugs to prescribe or surgery to perform.”
- Diagnosis – AI can be trained to recognize diseases by studying thousands of medical images. Kellogg states, “A software program could be trained on images of previous patients with known diagnoses to recognize features that indicate a positive or negative result.” This could help doctors catch illnesses earlier and make diagnoses more accurate.
To add another perspective to this large topic, Gideon Merkanapalli, a freshman at Green Level High, claims, “I don’t think so.”
He believes that medicine is not only about data and accuracy but also human relationships, empathy, and good judgment. AI can enhance healthcare and make it more efficient.
“AI is a tool. At the end of the day, we’ll always need real doctors to make the tough calls and connect with patients.”
Ultimately, AI won’t replace doctors, but it will make their jobs easier and more efficient. By combining AI’s data analysis with human expertise, medicine can become more advanced while still keeping the human care that makes healthcare so important.
