Introducing AI into healthcare: Surely a recipe for disaster!
As I said at the end of my previous article, we need to remain vigilant!
And here’s something that we really do need to be vigilant about – the introduction of AI into ‘healthcare’.
Although the use of AI may present benefits in certain areas of our lives, that will not be the case if – or maybe even when – it is utilised within the mainstream medical system of ‘healthcare’.
The reason? Because that system does not function from a genuine understanding of how the human body actually works, so the information being fed to AI will be seriously flawed, if not totally false!!
As the popular saying goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’.
So what am I referring to?
Yet again, it’s the good ol’ BBC that has provided the inspiration for me, as is often the case, this time in an article entitled, ‘Game changer’ AI detects hidden heart attack riskthat begins,
“Technology that identifies people at risk of a heart attack in the next 10 years has been hailed as “game changing” by scientists.”
This sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And something we should all be applauding, surely; but – and it is a huge but – we have to ask: What parameters of ‘risk’ is the technology detecting? What can it actually detect? The article states,
“The artificial intelligence (AI) model detects inflammation in the heart that does not show up on CT scans, which involve a combination of X-rays and computer technology.”
This does not offer an adequate explanation as far as I’m concerned, so let’s dig deeper.
A good place to start is to ask the question: What is inflammation?
According to the NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Services), which is part of the NIH and therefore a core player within the medical establishment,
“Inflammation is a normal part of the body’s defense to injury or infection, and, in this way, it is beneficial.”
Ignoring the reference to ‘infection’, this definition indicates that inflammation represents a healing process, not a disease-causing process.
The definition adds that,
“But inflammation is damaging when it occurs in healthy tissue or lasts too long.”
On the basis that inflammation is a healing process, how can it occur in ‘healthy tissue’? I would suggest that this could not be the case. If inflammation is present then there must be/have been some damage or injury.
Clearly, it’s acknowledged that inflammation is damaging if prolonged, but this still does not prove that it occurs in ‘healthy tissue’; in other words, this does not prove that the inflammation causes the damage to healthy tissue. The presence of prolonged inflammation indicates that there may well be an underlying issue that the body has not yet resolved, and this raises a question over whether the tissue can actually be referred to as ‘healthy’.
Interestingly, the NIEHS web page recognises that exposure to environmental chemicals is one of the factors that can give rise to inflammation. But the medical establishment system fails dismally to address this factor in any of its suggested approaches to dealing with inflammation, as I’ll show shortly.
This is how the AI technology is described,
“This technology is transformative and game changing because for the first time we can detect the biological processes that are invisible to the human eye, which precede the development of narrowings and blockages [within the heart],” said Prof Keith Channon, from the University of Oxford.
As part of the pilot, patients suffering from chest pain who are referred for a routine CT scan, have their scan analysed by Caristo Diagnostics’ CaRi-Heart AI platform.
An algorithm, which detects coronary inflammation and plaque, is then assessed by trained operators to verify the accuracy.”
So my next question is: How does this represent an improvement in the detection of ‘people at risk’?
As usual, the information being reported in this BBC article is the result of a study’, called the Orfan study (does anyone else find that a rather sinister acronym to choose?) Link to study
“The Orfan study (Oxford Risk Factors and Non-invasive imaging) involving 40,000 patients and published in the Lancet, found that 80% of people were sent back to primary care without a defined prevention or treatment plan.
Focusing on that cohort, researchers said they found that if patients had inflammation in their coronary arteries, they had a 20 to 30 times higher risk of dying from a cardiac event over the next 10 years.”
The purpose of the study was reported to be to,
“…test the hypothesis that coronary arterial inflammation drives cardiac mortality or major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in patients with or without CAD…”
CAD is coronary artery disease.
But even if inflammation is a significant factor associated with major cardiac events, that does not mean it is the driver or cause.
As mentioned earlier, the NIEHS admits that ‘exposure to environmental chemicals’ is one of the factors that can result in tissue inflammation.
However, this is the advice given to those people found to be ‘at risk’, as reported by the BBC article,
“The study, funded by BHF, found that by using the AI technology, 45% of those patients were prescribed medication or encouraged to make lifestyle changes to prevent the risk of future heart attacks.”
I acknowledge that ‘lifestyle changes’ may include some useful advice.
However, does the study recommend investigating the chemical causes of inflammation and addressing them? Sadly – but unsurprisingly – this is not the case.
The focus is based on ‘ending the disease process’, but that is not the same as improving health for the patient. And that is because, as I indicated at the beginning of this article, the medical system does not understand the human body, how it functions in health, what symptoms truly are, and how to restore the body to the state of health.
In the attempt to make us all believe that what they are reporting is ‘true’ and that it really does help people, the BBC cites a personal case. They refer to a 58-year old man who was enrolled in the Orfan study after experiencing chest pain and being referred for a CT scan. It seems he was regarded as a ‘person at risk’ and this is the advice he was given,
“The double-glazing salesman has now been prescribed statins, told to quit smoking and increase his exercise after tests using the AI analysis suggested he was at risk of having a heart attack.”
Where is the advice about ‘environmental chemicals’? Was he given that, but the BBC omitted to report it? Or was he not even given that advice?
As always, the pharmaceutical industry is a major beneficiary of this new ‘technology.
With respect to the use of statins, a December 2015 study entitled Statin Use and the Risk of Kidney Disease With Long-Term Follow-Up (8.4-Year Study) published in the American Journal of Cardiology recognises that there have been few studies on the long-term use of statins. The conclusion to the study states that,
“…statin use is associated with increased incidence of acute and chronic kidney disease.”
This information is not made available in the BBC article, for obvious reasons.
Instead, the medical system machinery marches on regardless, and is obviously keen to roll out this technology beyond merely detecting people they regard as being at risk. Citing Prof. Charalambos Antoniades, the Orfan study lead, the BBC reports,
“Now, with this kind of [AI] technology, we know exactly which patient has the disease activity in their arteries before the disease has even developed.”
“This means we can move early to end the disease process and treat this patient to prevent the disease from developing and then prevent heart attacks from happening.”
And this is where the use of this technology can truly be described as ‘a recipe for disaster’, as I claim in the title; the article continues,
“Its developer, Oxford University spinout company Caristo Diagnostics, said it was already working to adapt the technology to prevent strokes and diabetes.
So now they are not only planning to use AI to ‘detect’ people at risk, they are also going to use it to ‘prevent’ health issues – or so they claim.
Again, at the risk of repeating myself, problems cannot be solved if the root causes are unknown.
The medical establishment does not understand how the human body works, so they are totally clueless about ways to ‘prevent’ health problems.
The other point to highlight here is that the introduction and use of AI technology will inevitably reduce the requirement for medically trained people. The need for qualified doctors and nurses will decline rapidly – I wonder how many who work within the system have realised this? Will this finally open their eyes to the fatal flaws within the system they have spent years studying and practising? If not, I have no idea what it will take.
It is clear that the new AI system will mainly require technicians who can operate the technology and interpret the ‘results’, and maybe also deliver prescriptions, according to various algorithms – but this is all based on a completely false model.
This is not ‘healthcare’.
And before you think this only applies to the UK, please be aware of the final sentence within the BBC article,
“It is also under review in the US and has been approved for use in Europe and Australia.” (emphasis added)
The solution?
As always, it requires us to learn how to take responsibility for and control over our own health, so that we do not get caught up in this medical system that has nothing to do with ‘health’ and is moving further and further away from even trying to develop a better understanding of health and the human body.
