Bob Wachter

It is the AI helping me make the best decision for you as a patient based on things about you, but also about the medical literature, which evolves, changes very, very quickly.

And the best decision is not only the one that provides the best outcome, but the one that's the most cost effective.

It's been said that the most expensive piece of technology in a healthcare system is the doctor's pen, which of course is no longer the pen, it's the keyboard.

Where this really will have an impact is

I'm seeing you in my office or in the hospital.

And it's not like I now pull out my phone and say, this is a 52-year-old man who comes in with this, this, and this.

The AI is already reading your chart.

It already knows all those things about you.

And it's suggesting in real time, suggesting diagnoses and suggesting what the right tests would be and what the right treatments would be.

Now, do you need me in that setting?

I think so, but we'll have to see.

I think you need me to interpret all of this, to be a tiebreaker when there's a tough call, to deal with some complex, sometimes ethical issues, to weigh your own preferences as a patient or family.

There's a lot of complexity in this that I think goes beyond...

the kind of decision-making support that Waze gave me this morning when I drove into the studio.

The tech companies are playing this as we have no interest in replacing the doctor.

We really want to be a co-pilot.

We want to be your wingman.

But they obviously do want to replace the doctor.

I think for the foreseeable future, the complexity of medicine, the stakes of medicine, the regulatory environment, and periodically I do have to say to a patient, you have Alzheimer's disease or you have cancer or

I don't think patients are going to accept the idea that a bot's going to tell them that.