Latest news with #futureofmedicine
Medscape
28-07-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Medscape 2050: Adam Rodman
Medscape 2050: The Future of Medicine There will come a day, predicts Adam Rodman, MD, a general internist and medical educator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, when AI systems change disease. That's the day when they can not only diagnose diseases more accurately than humans, but define diseases in ways that only machines can understand. Take heart attacks, for example. Rodman hopes cardiologists will forgive him for pointing out that AI can already detect blocked coronary arteries from an EKG in ways that humans can't. In the not-too-distant future, Rodman believes, medicine will begin redefining more diseases and treatments that are simply not understandable by the human brain. That day isn't here yet, Rodman explains, because today's AI systems are still pretty similar to us. 'They're trained on a human understanding of disease,' he says, 'so even the best models are following the guidelines that we give them.' They mimic human reasoning, albeit a lot faster and using a lot more data. But as new AI models develop, we could reach what Rodman calls 'a nonhuman nosology': our clinical reasoning vs a machines-only thought process. And what happens when those disagree? What does it mean — for both doctors and patients — to trust a computer that we can't understand? Is this the day when doctors are out of a job? Rodman doesn't think so. Because medicine is about more than computation. There are relationships and procedures that can't be replaced. But certain areas of clinical practice will certainly change. 'If you have a job where you can sit down at a computer and interpret most of the data that has already been collected for you to make a decision,' he says, you should start looking over your shoulder. Medicine is going through an 'epistemic shift,' Rodman says, where the parameters of how we think are changing, so it's hard to predict what will come next. But we should all get ready.
Medscape
19-06-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Lisa Sanders: Full Interview Summary
Medscape 2050: The Future of Medicine In just 25 years, your annual medical checkup will undergo a makeover that would make Marcus Welby, MD, think he'd stepped onto the set of Star Trek. There will be no waiting room; you will check yourself in on a digital tablet. Your doctor will still greet you wearing a stethoscope, but it will be outfitted with a mini-ultrasound tool so your MD can see, as well as hear, your heart rate and breathing. Even the standard physician's clipboard will get an upgrade — becoming a mini-tablet containing all of your digital medical records, and the entire global library of medical data. These are just a few ways the practice of medicine (and the traditional annual physical) will change by 2050, according to Lisa Sanders, MD, professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine and medical director of Yale's Long Covid Multidisciplinary Care Center. New technologies — artificial intelligence, electronic medical records, and other med-tech innovations — will make those sci-fi medical transponders Dr McCoy used on 'Star Trek' seem old-fashioned by comparison, Sanders says. She even believes an entirely new medical specialty will emerge: the 'diagnostician,' trained in how best to combine the latest medical technologies with the human touch MDs bring to their practices. But one thing that won't change and may even become more central to the practice of medicine 25 years from now: The connection between doctor and patient. 'Now we have AI and I think that the potential for AI has been tremendous. But…it's still new,' she says. 'You know, people are already trying to get past the physical exam…but the physical exam was invented so that we could try to get a sense of what's going on inside the body. The out to be very important… It's part of a relationship you have — an intimate relationship — with a patient.' That's something Sanders says was emphasized during her treatment of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, when no medical technology could diagnose or treat the condition. Welcome to Modern Medicine 2050.
