Total Health patient empowerment
In a new era of AI and longevity medicine, patients have access to more medical data than any doctor can learn in a lifetime. The doctor’s greatest power lies now not just in the answers they provide, but in the questions they help you to ask.
There are serious risks with relying on AI and data alone. Key common areas include:
- Bias,
- Accuracy,
- 'Realism' and
- The problems of medical consensus.
These factors are likely to have a major bearing on the apparent medical evidence base - especially around informed choice and weighted decision making. It is therefore essential for us all to pause and reflect on the limitations, and enduring complexities of clinical care.
AI systems are only as good as the data that trains them, and the medical literature is far from neutral! A well-crafted AI report may ‘appear’ authoritative, but is in fact built on flawed assumptions or skewed inputs.
Doctors are warning of the bias, commercial influence, under-representation, sales narrative masquerading as 'science' and historical inequities. Without careful scrutiny, the risk is of creating a new gold standard that is neither truly inclusive nor consistently safe.
Some people will be early adopters of AI-generated care and diagnostic wearables; others will still want reassurance from a trusted face. Regardless of rate of technology adoption, all of us need someone who can bridge the gap between data and wisdom.
To quote the Editor of Total Health, Sue Ryder:
When information is plentiful and free, credibility and authority are priceless
Making medicine meaningful
This turning point offers profound risks and opportunities to patients. Total Health helps by bringing awareness to the potential pitfalls and providing interpreters of complexity, navigators of ambiguity, and companions in deeply human decisions.