AI in medicine: preparing for the future while preserving what matters

Abstract

2025 is here and medicine has continued to move away from the utopian vision of our admission essays for medical school. We are spending countless hours on electronic health records scrolling through layers of data to find the information we need, receiving vital information through fax machines, and listening to on-hold music as we try to help patients progress through labyrinthine treatment pathways so that they can get the care that they need. The administrative burden of modern medicine has become overwhelming. Healthcare providers face relentless obstacles in their workflows and inefficient technologies that impede patient care and contribute to suboptimal patient outcomes and physician burnout.1 Clearly, the labour of clinical practice is ripe for disruption and transformation. In response, the purveyors of artificial intelligence (AI) have promised solutions to overcome these seemingly intractable obstacles and inefficiencies. Given past experiences with the introduction of technology, such ambitious promises may understandably elicit doubt. A new paper …