Medical robots diagnose patients better than experienced doctors

Some medical robots are now doing better than their fellow human beings. Between craze and rejection, human doctors are divided. Here is what medicine could be soon.

Artificial intelligence is a technological tool involved in ever more numerous and diverse fields. This is particularly the case of medicine and surgery, where AI already provides decision support and simplification of surgical procedures. Medical artificial intelligence Babylon has taken a new step in achieving better results than human doctors in a final exam of skills.

By robots doctors must understand that it can be a machine with an artificial intelligence, a chatbot, a computer with software or a humanoid robot. There have long been automatic defibrillators capable of reliable diagnosis, an artificial intelligence that assesses the probabilities of success of a cancer therapy or radios analysis by artificial intelligence. Babylon is a software created by an eponymous British company that poses better diagnoses than even experienced doctors. Many of them are however resistant to this technology of medical robots.

 Artificial intelligence Babylon

Babylon Health has announced that its artificial intelligence Babylon, after passing a series of rigorous and comprehensive smart health tests, has shown its ability to provide medical advice at the level of those issued by human clinical physicians.

Babylon is an online AI in the form of a bot-chat that provides medical advice and diagnostics based on thorough and rigorous clinical questioning. When the diagnosis is uncertain or the pathology diagnosed seems important, the IA immediately initiates a videoconference with a real doctor to continue the interview.

When the smart medical robots do better than the human doctors

The Babylon software communicates remotely with the patient via SMS and will make a diagnosis based on the symptoms described by the patient. Surprising as it may seem, the chatbot gives 82% of good diagnoses while medical students at the end of the cycle reach only 72%. On difficult diagnoses, artificial intelligence was doing as well as seeing specialists do better on specific issues.

An old-fashioned status quo

Faced with these robots doctors, many professionals are refractory.Innovation has provoked a strong controversy within the medical community across the Channel. For Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), an international organization that brings together 34,000 physicians, artificial intelligence is “the future” of the discipline. Conversely, Martin Marshall, Vice President of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), questions the choice of questions submitted by Babylon to the software: “Machines are machines, doctors are highly trained and trained professionals. . The two can not be compared, a machine can assist a doctor but can never replace it. “

However, in view of the fact that many people in the world can not afford a doctor (almost half of humanity) and that WHO ensures that there are 5 million doctors worldwide These medical robots probably have a great future.

Babylon scored 97% on the reliability and safety of the diagnosis, compared with an average of 93.1% for human physicians.

In his speech, the founder of Babylon AI, Dr. Ali Parsa, announced that “according to the WHO, there is an overall lack of more than 5 million doctors, leaving half of the population without access to medical care basic. Even in the most developed countries, access to general medicine becomes complex and expensive, with sometimes very long waiting times. Babylon’s results demonstrate that it is possible for anyone, regardless of geographic location, to get free medical advice of the same quality as that of the most experienced doctors. “

“Tonight’s results clearly show how medical AI can offload some of the burden on healthcare systems around the world. Our mission is to put in the hands of every person on Earth, accessible and affordable medical services. These incredible results allow humanity to take another step towards a world where no one would be deprived of precise and rigorous medical advice, “he concludes.

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