AI in Healthcare - Hope, Fear, Need for Human Leadership

I saw the same program. AI is the future. It is everywhere. I know it is being used in many areas of Healthcare from research to actual treatment of patients. It is my hope that someone is making use of AI to find cause and treatment of PN.

Yes – Find cause and treatment of PN !!!

Humans must participate in the journey, not just solely rely on machines and AI.

If humans don’t authentically participate, human leadership in leading humans is essential, in this journey, one day AI and machines may be seen as THE solution to overcoming PN.
And
Humans become solely dependent on machines.
Not good for the future of humanity.

I have experienced humans being solely dependent on computers and software that:
1. Harmed my mom and me in the healthcare system.
2. Harms children, teachers, and taxpayers in the education system.

Humans muse use machines as tool in achieving human efforts.
Not turn human effort over to machines.

Did you see the 60 Minutes program on AI on 4/16? It was not specific to medical care, but mostly described the power and threat of chatGPT. Like CRSPR-Cas9, AI can be used for good and/or evil, and I have no doubt that, given the human capacity for the worst imaginable acts, that we will witness such acts. But is also capable of tremendous good, and the application to health care is one of them. We need people in positions of power in healthcare management that know how to select the appropriate controlled AI for PN needs. The CEO of google has advanced degrees in Neurosciences and Computer Science. That is the kind of leadership that is required – leaders who can select computer systems that can manage Big Data, detect patterns and trends, compare to similar compilations of data in related fields, and make suggestions for more likely diagnoses and their mechanisms, options for treatment, and risk assessment for each. This is no small task. If AI is to be useful and not harmful in healthcare, it must be corralled, and never relied upon solely as final arbiter.

I share your same emotions that you describe in your excellent piece on AI. I also share hope, fear, and frustrations on this subject; AI could, and should be an excellent source of information especially in health care; the other side of all equations on AI is the misuse of it for nefarious reasons.
Let us all hope : but there is definitely the always present, Caveat Emptor.

Yes – saw 60 minutes – it sparked me to connect
Yes to all you share

Want to help Mayo Clinic in providing human leadership in use of AI for PN??

Mayo leads corralling, and never relying solely on AI as final arbiter.

I have personally experienced this reliance on technology in healthcare harming my mom and me.

From Discussion on COVID vaccines and neuropathy
AI and Leadership in healthcare
—
Thank you all for sharing!!
Imagine!
Our healthcare system having leadership and management that listens, learns, and improves preventing and healing PN.

Our stories reveal the need – opportunity – for leadership.
A Mayo Clinic opportunity.

Imagine all our experiences, and others, being shared, captured, and used to inform and help our healthcare system in serving our physicians in their decision-making for serving the needs of their patients.

Serving patients in understanding, preventing, and healing PN and others.
Opportunity for leadership in healthcare for the use of technology.

My journey with PN, and all your stories, have revealed to me the need and urgency for leadership in healing our healthcare system.
Steve

All AI requires data, ideally in some standardized format. It has been my experience in two hospital systems in Boston that the collection of neuropathy data is abysmal.

The first problem is that outside of the best hospitals the diagnostic procedures used vary too much from MD to MD. You can see it in the conversations here where people have been told they have idiopathic neuropathy and someone asks if they’ve had a standard test and they say no. There must be a common baseline for all diagnoses.

The second problem is that the descriptive (phenotypic) information gathered is even more haphazardly collected and is stored as text: where does it hurt? There has to be a standard form for collecting this data, both so it can be compared patient-to-patient, and also so the progression can be tracked accurately over time for individuals.

The third problem is that there needs to be standardization in collecting patient histories.

The fourth problem is that the diagnostic descriptions are haphazard: is it peripheral? Is it axonal, small or large fiber, is the autonomic system involved, and if so, how much?, is it length-dependent, etc. Don’t just call it idiopathic peripheral neuropathy and leave it at that. That helps no one.

Finally, genetic testing should become standard for people with this disease. And not just small panels for known mutations like CMT. Whole exome tests could help explain why one person’s progression differs from another’s.

When you do these things you can see rapid improvement. There are millions of people with peripheral neuropathy and that’s a tremendous amount of potential data for building AI models. And right now it’s all being wasted.

This is an area where the leading hospitals like The Mayo Clinic could and should be taking the lead. There has been some improvement in the first item over the past few decades but it’s much too slow

Larry
Thank you !

Informed – well said.

Reveals one tool (having, collecting, sharing, and using data) for use by humans in the opportunity to heal a broken healthcare system.

Larry you may know others.

Hope
Mayo Clinic has, or will, reveal to us – Mayo Connect participants – if it is, or will, take a leadership role in helping heal our broken healthcare system.
If not – ?
Thoughts?
Steve

Let's get real. It doesn't matter if your young, middle-aged, old, black, white, red, we are all commodities with an expiration date. The expendable masses. The powers that be don't care, our institutions don't care and AI won't care…and I wouldn't want it to, that would be pathetic. Think about what happened during Covid when many were not even allowed to visit a dying spouse, family member or friend in the hospital to say goodbye. The elite view us all as a disgusting nuisance who have less and less value to them. And with advanced AI we will have no value to them at all. We are being indoctrinated from a very young age to be scared, obedient and loyal to a system that has only malice towards us. We can't escape the Orwellian world that's coming (or already here). Not in a monastery, not in a cloister, not in a cave, not in a prison. This is the world we live in, we are here… just us… Living shoulder to shoulder but often coerced to feel separate from one another and being told it's for our own good. A world controlled by the few for the few and at some point of the few. It's a dangerous and cruel world but stay alive as long as possible ya all, it's going to get interesting. Be kind and have courage….

Wow. Lots of angry people. Sometimes I am too. It seems there is so little being done to find answers about our neuropathy. So far for I have been the one doing the searching to find different modalities of treatment. Then I introduce it to my doctor and explain and Sometimes have to convince him to prescribe. I had a doctor who first diagnosed my neuropathy who was very good. He was always looking for ways to help me with the pain. Unfortunately, he got sick and had to retire and I have not been able to find another like him. I agree with one above, many of the medical community have lost site of the person. This has been happening in the past few years. The newer generation of doctors are seeing diseases and have forgotten about the person.