The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-upsThe promise of artificial intelligence is that it will transform productivity. Nowhere is that needed more than in healthcare. With ageing populations, tight spending constraints and overstretched medical staff in many health systems, a productivity revolution cannot arrive quickly enough. As Dr Margaret McCartney wrote in an FT Weekend essay marking the 75th anniversary of Britain’s National Health Service, the job of a general practitioner today is “essentially undoable.”
But technologists have been promising to transform healthcare for decades, with mixed results. It is a sector pockmarked by hubris, hype and false dawns. Most famously, IBM claimed that its Watson supercomputer, which in 2011 won the quiz game Jeopardy!, could also tackle cancer, but it failed to emerge as “an all-purpose answer box.” The public also remains deeply suspicious about the use of AI in healthcare. A Pew Research Center poll from earlier this year found 60 per cent of US respondents were “uncomfortable” with AI being used to diagnose disease or recommend treatment.
Can the latest promise of a technology-powered healthcare revolution, accelerated by the emergence of generative AI, deliver this time?