Presidio’s HealthSense AI is a new medical platform made to streamline doctor-patient interactions by transcribing, organizing and analyzing patient information. HealthSense holds the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of healthcare institutions; however, the careless implementation of these systems could lead to the eradication of valuable human entry-level positions and career jobs.
Institutions relying on HealthSense would only need to pay any costs associated with the platform and digital storage of the information instead of paying for employees. If such a change were made, the most obvious effect would be job losses in administrative positions since HealthSense most easily fills those roles. Additionally, the need for humans to perform entry-level positions, like medical scribing, would disappear, resulting in fewer opportunities for pre-med students to gain experience. Over time, this experience shortage would lead to a reduction in the quantity and quality of medical practitioners, which would exacerbate scarcity of affordable health care, outweighing the benefits of the AI.
HealthSense is conceptually one of the best ways to integrate AI into the medical field. It is designed to alleviate the strain on doctors by automatically recording information during patient visits for more effective compilation of records. The platform is also advertised as being able to facilitate faster diagnoses through more effective organization of information, which would save costs on redundant scans, misdiagnoses and potentially expensive tests.
Since HealthSense is designed to integrate into existing databases, there are few obstacles to making it more advantageous for a clinic to use this platform over hiring and training scribes or staff. Although HealthSense is intended for the medical field, there are many professions, ranging from computer-aided design technicians in engineering to legal clerks at law firms, with entry-level positions whose roles can be filled by AI. The value added to professional fields through the ability to gain foundational experience outweighs the potential for productivity increases, especially considering the risk of professionals in specific fields becoming more scarce.
While this tool should be used to improve productivity, there should be an equal priority placed on humans performing certain entry-level positions to facilitate their career development. Clinics and hospitals must be held responsible for balancing their financial stability with an investment in the future of the field. If precedents are set for the sweeping use of AI in entry level positions it will begin a trend toward the prioritization of AI for all non-specialized roles worsening the quality of professionals as well as unemployment rates.
