Artificial intelligence is not only focused on seeing how to make machines serve more and better at home, office, battlefields, but it is also applied in health centers. Already New technologies are being developed to collect data from blood pressure meters, electrocardiographs, and other devices. The care and research institutions are seeking to evaluate and disseminate this promising technology.
Curious initiatives are already taking place in the use, data collection and application of these on human health in Canada, where face-to-face or distance courses are developed for the doctor, researcher or curious in the use of this revolutionary technology that must respond well to the creators of it, we who should not be using our minds only for the design and construction of machines that ruin, but those that can really serve the elderly, children or convalescents due to health difficulties.
The traditional purposes of medicine (saving and prolonging life, promoting and preserving health, relieving pain and suffering) that are in the hands of human beings now pass to that of machines to improve or strengthen human work, which unfortunately by what we heard in dialogues with patients dissatisfied with the distracted and uninterested “attention” of doctors who are not showing enough interest to comply with what they promised to do under the Hippocratic oath that they said;
“I swear by Apollo the Physician and Aesculapius and by Hygeia and Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, placing them as judges, that this oath of mine will be fulfilled to the extent that I have power and discernment.”
Human dignity
In addition to “having no other purpose than the good and health of the sick” health has to focus on caring for people with the dignity they deserve. This condition is certainly not known to a machine, device or algorithm, any more than it is expected that the human being finds himself after the development, programming or design of the use of AI to identify health problems and find solutions for said problems that often do not have solution due to negligence, lack of technical or human resources and even infrastructure or good financing.
The health issue is an urgent issue on the political agenda that must aim at the quality of life of the citizen and avoid what we see daily with demonstrations by doctors demanding decent wages and treatment. The latter is also requested by patients to be able to use their real intelligence and not let the machines with their artificial intelligence have to heal what we sometimes expect unsuccessfully from people who have prepared themselves to cover well one of the most important areas for the population of any country.
Artificial intelligence applied to health is good, but everything must focus on the quality of life of the patient, who is the subject and object of all healing activities.
