Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

It is ironic that, for this blog about artificial intelligence (AI) and health care, I consulted AI.

It was through Google, which these days is infused by AI.

It can be contended that artificial intelligence has improved healthcare services by enhancing diagnostic accuracy, speeding up treatment, and reducing administrative burnout for clinicians.  Or, it also can be contended that AI relegates personal health care to second place at the behest of on-line resources.

According to Google, here are key arguments supporting AI in health care:

1. Faster and More Accurate Diagnostics

• Medical Imaging:  AI algorithms analyze X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and pathology slides with high speed and consistency, detecting tiny anomalies — such as early-stage tumors, micro-fractures, or retinal disease — that human eyes might fatigue over or miss.

• Pattern Recognition:  Machine learning models process vast datasets of patient histories and symptoms to flag high-risk conditions like sepsis or cardiovascular events long before traditional markers become obvious.

• Personalized Medicine and Drug Discovery

• Targeted Therapies:  AI evaluates a patient’s unique genetic profile, medical history, and real-time data from wearable devices to predict which drugs or therapies will work best with fewer adverse reactions.

• Accelerated Research:  Algorithms model molecular structures and simulate drug interactions, drastically cutting down the time and cost required to discover and develop new medications.

• Relief from Administrative Burnout

• Ambient Listening and Scribes:  AI-powered voice-to-text tools and automated medical scribes document doctor-patient conversations in real time, cutting down hours spent typing into Electronic Health Records.

• Workflow Optimization:  Behind the scenes, AI manages hospital bed allocation, staff scheduling, supply chain logistics, and billing cycles, allowing nurses and physicians to spend more direct time on patient care.

• Expanded Access and Patient Engagement

• Virtual Health Assistants:  AI chatbots and symptom checkers provide 24/7 triage, answer routine health questions, and handle appointment scheduling outside of standard clinic hours.

• Remote Monitoring:  Wearable tech paired with AI alerts care teams immediately if a patient’s vital signs drift into dangerous territory, enabling proactive rather than reactive care

Of course, for all the pros, there are cons, such as:

• Automated insurance and claim denials:  Insurers increasingly use AI tools to process and deny coverage or prior authorizations, accelerating bureaucratic hurdles for patients who rarely appeal.

• Algorithmic bias and inequality:  AI models trained on skewed or non-representative historical data can misdiagnose or under-treat minority and low-income populations, worsening health disparities.

• Documentation errors and “lazy doctor” effects:  Over-reliance on AI-generated clinical notes or summaries can lead providers to miss critical symptoms, overlook medication allergies, or lose human diagnostic intuition.

• Misleading health advice and hallucinations:  Generative AI chatbots and unvalidated medical tools frequently hallucinate non-existent conditions, under-triage emergency situations, or provide unsafe guidance.

• Privacy breaches and cyberattacks:  The massive data sets required to train healthcare AI make electronic health records (EHRs) prime targets for high-stakes data breaches and hacks.

• Escalating healthcare costs:  Some automated coding and diagnostic systems have been criticized for driving up billing complexity and hospital costs without translating to better patient care.

And, then there is the other issue — loss of the human touch – especially if you have current providers who are good at human interaction.  With AI, much of that could go away.

From a story in the Washington Post, here are key takeaways on a survey about AI and health:

• Americans are generally open to AI handling administrative and medical tasks, but they largely don’t want AI operating without human oversight.
• The largest share is open to AI – either on its own or with human review – translating for patients, and the smallest share is receptive to AI deciding on health insurance claims.
• A majority — 60 per cent — is uncomfortable with AI being used for healthcare tasks like diagnoses and treatments, double the share who says they’re comfortable.
• Americans are split on whether the use of AI in health and medicine would improve or worsen patient outcomes.  Young adults have grown more pessimistic since 2022.
• About half say AI would worsen the patient-doctor relationship and security of patient health information, but about three-in-ten say it could improve healthcare access. And large shares are unsure about AI’s impact.

Americans’ openness to AI doing different healthcare tasks – either alone or with human review – depends on what’s at stake.

As for me, a retired health care lobbyist and, of course, a user of health care services, I have no difficulty with AI helping in the ways outlined earlier in this blog. 

But I also want to continue positive, personal doctor-patient relationships which, fortunately, I have now and don’t want to lose in the name of efficiency.