Artificial intelligence at the service of medicine

Can Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is dominating the Fourth Industrial Revolution in which we are living, pose a threat to human work? Is there a world in which robots act and even reason instead of the worker, who risks being excluded from the production circuit?

 These are questions that many people are asking themselves today, worried about the changes that new technologies are bringing to human work. Nonetheless, as reported in an article in Corriere della Sera on June 12, the latest report of the World Economic Forum “The Future of Job 2018” offers encouraging scenarios, provided, however, that you invest in training.

From the exclusion of the worker to new jobs

Amazon warehouses are the most obvious example of how the machine drives work instead of man. Amazon commissioned the super robot “Carton Wrap” from the company Cmc in Città di Castello (Perugia) to create made-to-measure packaging; it is capable of packaging 700 packs per hour, five times the speed guaranteed by a worker. As a result, around 1300 job cuts are expected in the USA.

Yet, despite the fear that technology may cause major job losses, experts make optimistic predictions: according to the report, that within three years artificial intelligence and robots will create 133 million jobs, while there will be less than 75 million, and then there will be a surplus of 58 million.

Artificial intelligence and future doctors: Humanitas University and Polytechnic together

In the health sector, artificial intelligence can also outperform humans in certain tasks and areas.

 In order to make the adoption of technologies in this field possible, it is essential to provide future health professionals (doctors and health professionals) with an educational and training path that combines medical science with engineering.

 It is true that with the advent of artificial intelligence some professions in the health field will disappear, but new ones will be created, which will operate in a different way, with different roles andwith the hope to improve the way patients are treated. 

 In this regard, Humanitas University and the Polytechnic University of Milan, have realized that to keep pace with technological development the skills of future doctors must develop, increase and integrate with the knowledge of biomedical engineering; and therefore have created a new degree course, the MEDTEC School, unique in the world.

 From it will be born, therefore, an innovative professional figure who will be able to understand and apply the new technologies (precision medicine, artificial intelligence, neuro-robotics, big data, etc..) that in recent decades have played a key role in the path of patient care and increase life expectancy.