Future of GPs and FNPs

[Leedeedee]

There has been a lot of discussion (arguments!) about the future of General Practice and whether MDs will still have a role. Is it possible this is entirely the wrong question. There is currently a trial going on in London for patients contacting the telephone GP service to be initially spoken to by a Chatbot. Using its database it can then either diagnose something simple or refer onto hospital etc.

Worrying future trend or a lot of nonsense, dreamed up by geeks who don't understand the real world of medicine? What say you?

The robot will see you now: can doctors survive the rise of AI? | Spectator Health

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

I think this idea is going to be similar to the self-driving car. Great in theory, but extremely slow to develop and catch on. Every time someone is harmed, misdiagnosed or killed by the "electronic doctor" there will be a major set back. We may get there eventually, but it's nothing that we will see widely used in our lifetime. Robotics is more suited to some types of medicine than others. For example, there are places in the UK that utilize almost fully automated anesthesia machines which deliver anesthesia and medications independently based on the feedback from the patient's monitor. The role of the anesthesiologist is to supervise the machine and take over as needed. For general practice and triage, though, we are much further from automating. Physical assessment is a huge part of triage and currently there is no way of coding that kind of objective visual and tactile feedback into a computer program and though I don't doubt that technology may eventually be developed, for now it's just a pipe dream. After all, WebMD was founded 20 years ago and still leaves much to be desired as a diagnostic tool.