The AI Health Care Revolution Is Already Here

Kellie Owens, PhD, answered a call from her mom, who was on the way home from a doctor’s office in rural Michigan. Her mom wasn’t calling to share her blood work results or say that she didn’t need a hip replacement—it was to tell Owens that the doctor had used Ambient.ai, a tool that listens to, and generates notes from, patient-provider conversations.

Owens, who is a medical ethicist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, says her mom knew she’d be intrigued that AI had been used in the office.

“She was like, ‘l’ll show you what my notes look like after they’re generated by this chatbot!’” Owens, an assistant professor in the department of population health, recalls. “She was into it.”

Taking over clinicians’ note-taking duties is just one way AI is already infiltrating doctors’ offices nationwide. You’ve likely seen it in action in other ways too. In fact, if you’ve used a chatbot through your doctor’s office, undergone a minimally invasive surgery, received automated lab results, worn an Apple Watch, or tracked your periods with an app, then congratulations—you’re already part of the computer-assisted medical revolution, which taps into everything from algorithms to deep learning networks.

“AI is already here,” says Women’s Health advisor Samantha Nazareth, MD, a New York City–based internal medicine physician and gastroenterologist. “We’ve been using it for years, and you probably didn’t realize it.”

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