,
7 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Our portfolio company Mfine uses bots not to replace doctors but rather to make them more productive. In a doctor-deficient country like India, they increase doctors' capacity by 2.5x. For patients, this means no more waiting to consult top doctors.
Let me explain. We perhaps overestimate the capabilities of bots in healthcare. That results either in wild optimism ("free healthcare for all in 10 years") or unfounded fears ("OMG, bots are going to replace doctors"). The reality is a little more sobering.
Bots can help with a lot in healthcare: collecting symptoms, assisting with diagnostics, generating automated treatment plans, and in highly bounded conditions, apply some clinical judgment. However, we are nowhere close to replacing doctors with the current tech roadmap.
In the medium term, AI in general and bots in particular will be a massive help to doctors. They free up the physician's time from any activity that doesn't require clinical judgment, and assists them in making better decisions.
Very importantly, bots can help create automated EMRs (electronic medical records), which has been a bain of the healthcare industry for two decades. In all the above cases, a bot works as a physician's assistant than their replacement.
For a country like India, bots promise nothing short of a healthcare revolution. But maybe not a "revenge of the robots" kind of revolution yet. :-)
*PS: Bane, not Bain. I am interviewing too many consultants these days.
