Olga Yakusheva, PhD,
is an associate professor of economics at Marquette University. Richard C.
Lindrooth, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Colorado
Anschutz Medical Campus. Both are INQRI grantees.
Technological
innovation is rapidly transforming patient care. A new generation of innovations
will potentially change the most fundamental aspect of the patient experience –
patients’ interactions with physicians and nurses. The FDA recently approved the
first
autonomous telemedicine robot for use in acute care hospitals. Even more advanced
technologies, some capable of processing up to tens of millions of pages of
plain medical text per second, are being tested and may soon be used to
diagnose conditions and recommend treatment, with limited input from clinicians.
This new technology has the potential to
perform several tasks more efficiently than clinicians, albeit with some
limitations. It can quickly and effectively sift through large amounts of
information and, based on a complex set of guidelines, create a
probability-weighted list of diagnoses and recommendations. The result will be
purely evidence-based and free of human cognitive
decision-making biases. The
technology can drastically speed diffusion of new research and guidelines
through electronic dissemination, similar to automatic software updates, and
make most novel treatment regimens instantly available to patients.
However, even the smartest technology
may not perform well when guidelines require information that is not easily quantifiable,
nor when decision-making requires patient-specific judgment. Furthermore, technology
is unlikely to supplant humans in direct patient care, including procedures and
tasks that require empathy and emotional support.
