The new artificial intelligence (AI) tool implemented at the Parque Touli hospital in Sabadell has caused a stir among doctors, who see their skills under threat from the advent of technology that aims to reduce waiting times at the Catalan Center for Emergency Department Support. promises. To assess symptoms and issue a diagnosis.
“A doctor cannot be replaced by an artificial intelligence program,” Javier Leonart, general secretary of the Matejs de Catalunya – the majority union in the category of Catalan health practitioners – reassures the medium, who believes this is the latest incorporation. Another step in the strategy of medicine without doctors”.
“Doctor does not come to see the patient”
Christened as the Advance Resolution Assistance Unit (ARA), the tool aims to improve the experience of the more than 130,000 patients who visit hospital emergency rooms each year. Working hand-in-hand with the nursing staff, the software initiates patient care with a series of questions to obtain a list of possible diseases that must be confirmed or ruled out by other medical tests.
However, the nursing staff is always in charge of confirming the diagnosis and preparing the emergency report which must ultimately be signed by the physician. A mechanism the union criticizes is that doctors are forced to validate pathology and sign off on reports of patients they have not seen. “They are prescribing drugs blindly,” he laments.
“This is not the solution to the shortage of doctors”
“The administration is clear, the robot doctor doesn’t charge, doesn’t complain and, above all, doesn’t strike. But does anyone think about the quality of care the patients receive?”, continues the professional. In this sense, he condemns that the management or administration is incorporating these new tools to address a fundamental problem: the shortage of doctors.
“Like all technology, it can be a good support tool, but doctors are not replaceable,” he says. Thus, he emphasizes that the problem is not technology, but its use. In this case, they believe that artificial intelligence is being used as a “toy” to find a substitute for professionals.
Reduce costs
For this reason, they claim that this is not the solution and that they should focus on efforts to make the profession “more attractive” by improving doctors’ working conditions and remuneration. “Let us not fool ourselves if these trials are not done in any way to improve the quality of care or reduce waiting times,” laments the secretary-general. “It is basically to reduce costs. is, as he has always done.”
The shortage of doctors is, in fact, one of the most serious problems declared by the medical community in Catalonia. The retirement of 9,000 doctors in the next 10 years will add up to a few more, they tell the union. Thus, they warn that, if the conditions of professionals are not improved, it will be difficult to make a generational change.
Without losing quality and safety
With this new AI tool, the nursing team guides and treats patients with low-complexity and high-incidence conditions such as neck pain, ankle sprain, urinary tract infection, and vertigo. All this, “without losing out on the quality and safety of health care,” says the health center.
The software used by the ARA unit has been specially adapted for this project in collaboration with the Parc Taulí Research and Innovation Institute (I3PT). Artificial intelligence is gaining weight in society and the debate is on: is technology capable of replacing a doctor?
