In a joint venture called Stargate, the president and private businesses are looking to roll out a $500 billion investment into the expansion of artificial intelligence and possible vaccines for cancer.
While early cancer detection can be provided with a simple blood test, artificial intelligence can supposedly be leveraged to look at the blood test and find the cancers that are seriously threatening someone's health and develop a vaccine for a patient's particular needs within 48 hours.
Tiffany Schatz, M.D., a thoracic and general surgeon who also takes care of lung cancer patients, thinks AI can bring "a significant amount of contribution" to the medical field, but as it cannot, for instance, perform the necessary medical tests, it "is a long way from" detecting cancer.
The idea that it could help better detect, diagnose, stage, and treat cancer is "definitely on the horizon and could definitely be positive for our medical care," she adds.
Still, even if the technology for that were in place today, she says anyone informed about the presence of cancer would still need to speak with a doctor.
"We are so far from self-driving medical care," she asserts. "Even with the testing that we have now, people need doctors to help them understand what the tests say and what they mean and what they ought to do about it."
Dr. Schatz believes a human physician adds a tremendous amount to the care and comfort to patients experiencing illness and major life choices like surgery, so she does not think that being cared for by a physician will or should go out of style at any point.
