Great essay! I've experienced similar pressures on productivity in the pathology world. The focus is on ever-increasing benchmarks for reading cases and a fee-per-case bonus structure that incentivizes quantity over quality, to the point where spending ~5-7 minutes on a case is borderline "too long." How many of us would want our own loved ones to get a critical diagnosis in such a rushed timeframe? Admittedly, for some lesions, that time is more than sufficient, but for others I have caught subtle or rare diagnoses in academic labs when I had the (luxury of) time to think and cross-check some references that would never be possible in the corporate world.
Many articles have been written in recent years about physicians spending so much time on their EMRs and jumping through the hoops of record-keeping (both to guarantee insurance company reimbursement for their time and to defend against liability) that it is causing burnout as well as decreased quality of medical care. I wholeheartedly agree that AI has the potential to give us some of our time back. We already see this a little bit with voice recognition software dictation (powered by AI, but its become so established that like autocorrect we no longer think of it as such), but there is way more potential. I think of how much a tool like Elicit could help quickly find and filter published studies, among others.
But as you warn, this future is not guaranteed. A lot of the bean counters (who are rarely DVMs or even have a science background) see AI primarily as a tool to boost margins and increase ShArEHoLdEr VaLuE. It can--and should--be BOTH; it's up to veterinarians and allied professionals to ensure that it has benefits as much for patients and practitioners as the bottomline.
Side note: Definitely check out the books "Deep Work" by Cal Newport and "The Shallows" by Nick Carr. Each deals with the issue of how to retain a modicum of patience and attention in this hyperconnected digital world. It's challenging, but if you can pull it off it basically becomes a superpower in this ADHD world.
Great essay! I've experienced similar pressures on productivity in the pathology world. The focus is on ever-increasing benchmarks for reading cases and a fee-per-case bonus structure that incentivizes quantity over quality, to the point where spending ~5-7 minutes on a case is borderline "too long." How many of us would want our own loved ones to get a critical diagnosis in such a rushed timeframe? Admittedly, for some lesions, that time is more than sufficient, but for others I have caught subtle or rare diagnoses in academic labs when I had the (luxury of) time to think and cross-check some references that would never be possible in the corporate world.
Many articles have been written in recent years about physicians spending so much time on their EMRs and jumping through the hoops of record-keeping (both to guarantee insurance company reimbursement for their time and to defend against liability) that it is causing burnout as well as decreased quality of medical care. I wholeheartedly agree that AI has the potential to give us some of our time back. We already see this a little bit with voice recognition software dictation (powered by AI, but its become so established that like autocorrect we no longer think of it as such), but there is way more potential. I think of how much a tool like Elicit could help quickly find and filter published studies, among others.
But as you warn, this future is not guaranteed. A lot of the bean counters (who are rarely DVMs or even have a science background) see AI primarily as a tool to boost margins and increase ShArEHoLdEr VaLuE. It can--and should--be BOTH; it's up to veterinarians and allied professionals to ensure that it has benefits as much for patients and practitioners as the bottomline.
Side note: Definitely check out the books "Deep Work" by Cal Newport and "The Shallows" by Nick Carr. Each deals with the issue of how to retain a modicum of patience and attention in this hyperconnected digital world. It's challenging, but if you can pull it off it basically becomes a superpower in this ADHD world.