Dr. Machine, M.D.

The other day I met with a professor who teaches computer chip design amongst other things. He is from a generation who has also lived comfortably in an age without the internet and mobile phones.

The professor was a multi-disciplinary person and his interests were thus wide ranging. He wanted to inquire about how doctors take to technology in their professional lives. 

He asked me if I was comfortable using more and more technology in my practice, and if so how far I would go with it.
I said I was okay with using technology as long as I remained in control of what I am doing to the patient with the help of any technology, but the moment a computer or a machine takes over the exclusive control of decision making, I would not use it from that point onward. I gave him the example of robot-assisted, remotely performed surgeries which are now on the horizon. I said that I would not at all be comfortable with that kind of surgery myself if I was the patient, knowing what I do about the human body as well as about surgical or clinical decision making on the spur of the moment which can only come with experience.

It was a surprise that he liked my answer because I had assumed that as a person who actually powers the technology that doctors use, he would feel affronted rather than pleased with my answer. His reasons were as candid as the man himself.

He said he had recently undergone a lasik (a type of a laser) assisted correction of his eye's  refractory error. And he knew that this particular surgical procedure involved, more than any other surgery as of now, the direct of use of a computer programmed knife (the laser) to do the cutting of his cornea. As a patient he was aware during surgery that the doctor had moved away after positioning the laser gun in front of his eyes, and had solely depended upon the computer-chip that ran the laser’s program to do the job. Thankfully for him, the procedure went in his favour. What disturbed him was the fact that he knew the laser and its chips more intimately than the doctor and was acutely aware of what could go wrong with the chips!

He went further than that. He said, that as a computer programmer, he could only write the program for a machine based on what was his interpretation of the doctor’s requirements. He said that not only this may not be enough for all eventualities in a clinical setting, but that it could also be erroneous sometimes. The combined potential of these two factors was a scare enough for him to prefer to have a doctor perform his surgeries ‘hands-on’ rather than depend on chips alone. 

The doctor commanded by a chip is worse than a chimp, the professor said.

Thankfully most doctors are better than that!