Earlier this week, the world woke up to the realization that AI powered systems can now approximate human level decision making to solve some of the most complex tasks previously considered the exclusive preserve of humans, like piloting cars.
This announcement by Tesla will end up shaping the future of some the most hardcore traditional professions like healthcare, that had previously 'resisted' the onslaught of the digital age, because of the complex and nuanced pattern of the decisions that need to be made in these professions that couldn't be tackled by the 'dumb' computers.
Now just by observing human behavior these new AI-powered systems can in a matter of minutes learn from human experiences, and make real-time real-life decisions based on what they have learned
The next frontier yet to be fully conquered by digital technologies is healthcare, and the future is data and patient driven.
Let us imagine these scenarios:
You wake up in the morning pick up your smart device and at the touch of a button you can check what system in your body needs attention, or what cell or biological molecule has the potential to get out of control in a few years’ time.
Your AI-driven smart device suggests options of treatment, including remotely modulating your immune system to fight off the danger, suggesting medications to use which can be delivered right at your doorstep or surgical intervention.
Your device suggests a list of walk-in centers operating autonomous AI-powered robotic surgeons that can perform minimal access surgeries with little or no human supervision.
You get your surgery done at your convenience and return home the same day.
Only the rarest 1% of medical or surgical cases end up in hospitals to be seen by human physicians or surgeons, and even these can be solved entirely remotely by the specialist who with the patient's consent can create a high-definition digital replica of the patient which he can then interact with on a special network of human and computers, just the way we experience the world through our augmented reality sets. Even the most complex surgeries, those that can not be performed by AI-powered robotic surgeons, will be performed remotely by human surgeons as though we were playing real-life augmented reality games.
Doctors can interact with their patients and monitor them remotely by connecting with them on vast a human-computer network, without losing any sensory experiences.
This removes the burden on hospitals and healthcare professionals and places the control of an individual's healthcare right in his/her hands.
The question is how do we achieve this?
Built into all complex systems we humans have engineered is the ability to generate data about itself to enable us troubleshoot anomalies within the system. The human body will be no different.
The human body is riddled with sensors that collect information which apprise the brain of what goes on within each system, tissues and cells of the body at every point in time.
Very high-fidelity data about the body is constantly generated by the body itself.
A treasure trove of data that we can use to our advantage, if we can get to it.
So far, the current approach by tech companies is to build brain implants to connect the brain to a computer and not even for the purpose of getting access to this massive amount of data in the brain, but rather for the purpose of helping quadriplegic patients interact with digital machines. There are however better ways of solving the problem.
In my book a fiction novel published a year ago, I described how by connecting AI-powered computers with the human brain in a vast network where information is freely shared, they can learn quickly from the experiences of humans thus improving their intelligence and their problem-solving abilities astronomically.
If this were possible, and I am convinced it is, then it could find a ready application in advancing healthcare service delivery. Specialized AI systems can be connected on this network with the brains of the world’s most prolific surgeons and physicians so that these AI systems can learn from their vast experiences, and make medical decisions no differently from humans, or perhaps even much better. This will mean that long after these experts might have left us, their wealth of experiences will continue to persist and be beneficial to humankind. Also, since these AI systems are capable of absorbing vast amounts of knowledge and experiences in a matter of just hours, we can have them trained to very high levels of proficiency within hours, as opposed to the long number of years required for traditional medical training.
We know a lot about human health and the various factors that affect our health. Thousands of parameters can be monitored in one patient, each of which could be constantly changing. In emergencies, or even in elective cases, we can only keep up with very few of these parameters at a time, but an AI-powered system can easily keep tract of each one of these parameters and even more and the frequency with which they change and make necessary instant adjustments as is required to keep the patient alive, so these systems will probably be a lot more efficient than humans.
After careful consideration of the physiology and architecture of the human nervous system, I am convinced that the human brain has to be constantly stimulated by an energy domiciled in a special organ within the brain since the brain is not autonomous. If we can identify this energy, then we can develop the technology to enable us gain access to all the information in the brain through this energy, and just like Windows OS placed a computer inside every home and democratized computing, this new technology has the potential to place the control of our healthcare at our fingertips, ensuring everyone gets access to quality healthcare at vastly reduced cost.
Healthcare service providers who need access to this very valuable resource - your data - will have to pay for it. Being a patient wouldn't be more fun. You get access to the best healthcare services available by paying with your data, and still leave the hospital having made a chunk of money, your misfortune literally becoming a blessing.
This is only just the beginning. The dawn of Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) technology promises to disrupt a number of sectors in the coming years, not least amongst which is healthcare, but only if Elon Musk’s Neuralink team will recognize that the way to go is the development of the technology I have described.