Needless to say, this starry-eyed view of medicine is long extinct. Nowadays, your hospitalized patient may have been discharged before you complete your admission note. Your packed clinic schedule continues to defy the laws of physics regarding bodies occupying the same space at the same time. You are constantly stressed by the barrage of diktats imposed by insurers and bureaucrats. Who has time to percuss Traube’s space or to carefully palpate a knee in search of an evanescent fluid bulge? With surveys reporting that the average office visit runs somewhere between 13 and 16 minutes in length, there isn’t much time to play the role of an inquisitive Sir William Osler.1 (In fact, Osler was far from perfect: He seemed to have little patience for arthritic patients, having been quoted as saying that he would head out the back door when they arrived through the front door.2) The constant pressure of having to efficiently diagnose and manage four to five patients every hour makes one look back with envy at the slow-paced, genteel approach of the past. Help!
My Dear Watson
The promise of AI is such that in the future, we may be able to enter data into a system and in seconds, the correct diagnosis and optimal treatment plan would be displayed.
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Millions of scientific articles have migrated online from book-filled libraries. Journals and textbooks have established a presence on the Internet, too, along with evidence-based clinical support resources that are usually restricted to paid subscribers. For the nonpaying customer, there is always Wikipedia or simply googling a term. The information may be free, but its veracity can be spotty.3 Millennials are often drawn to social media sites, so, not surprisingly, many have been attracted to crowdsourcing as a way of reaching a consensus regarding a challenging diagnosis (see “Can DIY Medicine Tame Rampaging Healthcare Costs?” The Rheumatologist, April 2015). But most of these resources require the user to have some medical literacy to better navigate the maze of information.
