Today, I want to show you how AI is watching: how machines improve doctors like me.
The future has already entered the room between the mouse click and the CT scanner’s hum.
As a radiation oncologist, I sit in front of a screen every day, staring at patterns that could be someone’s salvation or sorrow.
When I was younger, I thought of medicine as jazz: structured but always improvising.
Now it feels like I’m sharing the stage with a quiet, invisible pianist.
The Machine in the Room
Artificial Intelligence doesn’t knock; it just appears, like a cat in a Murakami novel — unexpected, self-assured, watching everything.
In radiology, it lingers in the shadows of breast tissue, pointing out what we missed, not loudly, but insistently.
A 2020 study published in Nature showed this:
Google’s deep learning model for mammography outperformed human radiologists in spotting breast cancer, reducing false positives by 5.7% and false negatives by 9.4% in U.S. data.
AI Reading Pathology Slides
Pathologists, once solitary figures hunched over microscopes, now work beside digital minds that never blink.
I watch HER2 scores emerge with strange clarity, not from intuition, but from algorithms trained on oceans of data (tens of thousands of pathology slides).
AI models like HER2NET are now used to determine HER2 status in breast cancer biopsies.
They offer more consistent scoring than manual human evaluation, which can vary between observers.
AI Helping Optimize Chemotherapy
Researchers are combining AI and mass spectrometry to rapidly profile how a patient’s body metabolizes cancer drugs — an early step toward matching therapy to biology with precision, not guesswork.
This clinical world isn’t science fiction — it’s tomorrow morning’s tumor board.
The Cartographer’s Gift
In radiation oncology, we call it “contouring,” but it’s a kind of cartography — mapping invisible landscapes beneath the skin.
What once took hours — tracing each curve of a lung, each hidden wrinkle of the heart — can now be sketched in minutes by code.
It’s as if someone handed us a magic pen that knows where not to go.
What the Machine Doesn’t Know
“They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou.
Still, the machine doesn’t know that the patient’s daughter is getting married next month or that they cry when they think about missing it.
I am still needed!
The soul of the work remains ours — the trembling voice, the long pause before the words “potentially curable,” the silence that follows.
Yet, the more time the machine gives us, the more time we have to be human again.
There’s beauty in that — a strange, bittersweet rhythm where the mechanical enables the tender.
The Watcher Without Judgment
AI is watching, yes — but not like Big Brother.
It watches like a clock maker might watch a dancer: with reverence, attention, and an urge to smooth the tempo.
I am not afraid.
I’m curious.
I’m grateful.
The Future I Hoped For – How Machines Improve Doctors
Because now, finally, I spend fewer hours staring at the screen — and more holding someone’s hand.
And that, to me, feels like the future I always hoped for.
Thank you for reading “How Machines Improve Doctors.” Please sign up to follow me.
Leave a Reply