Integrating artificial intelligence in health care can help fill current gaps in the system and make it accessible as it should “cost the same as a Google search,” according to Vinod Khosla.
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“The single scarcest resource in health care is really expertise,” according to the Indian-American billionaire and venture capitalist, who founded the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.
Speaking at Prescription for Progress, a flagship Devex event, Khosla said some digital health solutions, such as telehealth, can help fill the gap in expertise, but it’s only a short-term fix to the problem.
“You could put a doctor on telehealth on a video conference call with a patient, but that's not changing the physician resource or making the physician any better. It's maybe making them a little more efficient, but there's a limit to that efficiency,” he said.
But if AI can embody the knowledge of “really great” primary care physicians, oncologists, or cardiologists, it can help open up health care to more people. It can also be 10 times cheaper and better than telemedicine, he said.
However, for this to work, health systems should try to start using AI now for it to get better, he said. He argued that the improvement of computer technology from what it is now did not happen automatically; instead humans helped improve it.
“We have to participate and improve it, and when it's not perfect, the answer isn't the system isn't perfect; the answer is we will have humans mediate this,” he said.
About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
