Why ChatGPT Could Lead To A 'Two-Tier' Healthcare System

Hi, WA friends!

I don't usually blog about medical topics on WA, but I think some of you might find this article from Becker's Health It interesting.

Dr. Yaraghi's Opinion

Here is the article's content, quoted below:

ChatGPT and similar generative artificial intelligence technologies present a "bleak outlook for interoperability and fairness," a business tech professor wrote in Health Affairs.

Niam Yaraghi, PhD, associate professor of business technology at the University of Miami and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said to imagine if Amazon subsidiary One Medical created a proprietary large language model for its patients and its competitors opted to stop sharing healthcare data with them. Then providers might all try to create their own "fragmented" models.

"Since provision of medical services through this technology would have a negligible marginal cost for the providers, they may end up creating a two-tier system in which patients with better insurance are prioritized for in-person visits, leaving those with lower socioeconomic status with AI-based chatbots," he wrote in the June 9 article.

Dr. Yaraghi compared this situation to education during the pandemic, when private schools had the resources to maintain in-person schooling.

He suggested the government update its reimbursement policies for telemedicine and AI-enabled healthcare and enforce the freeflow of healthcare data sharing and increase financial incentives for doing so.

My Take On The Situation

Hopefully, more good than bad will come from AI implementation in clinical medicine.

Blockchain or an equivalent technology has the potential to vastly improve interoperability between disparate electronic health records.

I think the practice of medicine will have the best clinical outcome in a "patient-to-physician" environment, with AI being used to augment its value, not replace it.

However, there are some workflows where "patient-to-AI" interactions would be beneficial, such as servicing patients in areas of the world where healthcare is in short supply or altogether unavailable.

Nothing is more important than proper healthcare for all, so let's get it right the first time!

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Rock On & Be Well! 🤘🩺
Frank 🎸