Startup says their AI is better at diagnosing diseases than doctors

Moneycontrol News

Babylon Health, a healthcare start-up has said that their artificial intelligence system (AI) is said 'to be better at diagnosing medical conditions as compared to doctors'. General practitioners all around the world have as expected termed these claims as 'dubious'.

The startup which currently works with the UK's National Health Service (NHS) is working on a product called 'GP At Hand', which will allow people to book a consultation with their doctor over a video call.

As per a report by CNBC, the company has now created a chatbot that lets people talk with an AI-powered robot. A patient can tell the AI about the symptoms and AI, in turn, interprets the symptoms and tells the patient what the problem is. However, it still cannot be called a medical diagnosis.

The chatbot was fed with questions from the official exam set by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in the UK. Any doctor practising in the UK needs to pass this exam set by RCGP, which is a membership body for family doctors in the UK.

Since the official test papers are not public, Babylon used questions from previous exam papers in order to test the chatbot. According to Babylon Health, their AI scored an 82 percent in the test, while the average pass mark for real doctors was 72 percent over the past five years.

However, the test didn't go down well with officials from RCPG. Martin Marshall, vice chair of RCPG said, "The potential of technology to support doctors to deliver the best possible patient care is fantastic, but at the end of the day, computers are computers, and GPs are highly-trained medical professionals: the two can't be compared and the former may support, but will never replace, the latter. No app or algorithm will be able to do what a GP does."

As per Marshall, the test Babylon used was only for revision purpose, so judging Babylon Health's algorithm based on that test is unfair.