Is AI the penicillin of the 21st century or just another pill?

month ago, the platform Notion launched its own Artificial Intelligence (AI), and honestly, I can’t stop playing with it. At times, I can't believe what I'm seeing. Not just because I'm always pleasantly surprised by the positive responses I get, but also because I feel so privileged to live in a time where we're witnessing something so historic.

Moreover, it’s one of those moments that doesn’t stem from war. There’s nothing better than opening a history book and reading about how Alexander Fleming invented penicillin, saving thousands of lives and countless future generations. The most exciting part? It wasn’t even intentional—a mold just grew on a bacterial culture. Much like when we forget yogurt in the fridge during vacation. However, this small accident remained unnoticed for ten years.

Indeed, although penicillin became one of the greatest revolutions in healthcare practices, its potential wasn’t immediately recognized. The same could happen with AI.

Sometimes humanity fails to pay attention to progress. We view innovation with skepticism. To be fair, it can be frightening to think we’ve built machines that reason and think independently. However, they can offer immense value in countless areas. AI isn’t just a robot that generates images, answers questions, or creates personalized avatars. AI is everywhere: in education, it enhances personalized learning and student assessments; in agriculture, it aids in crop management; in the financial industry, it helps make decisions and prevent fraud. But did you know it’s already working as a medical assistant?

Better Allocated Budgets

Spain allocates 7.6% of its GDP to healthcare (though still below the European average). Of that budget, according to Insider Intelligence, 30% is tied to administrative tasks. And in any industry, time is money.

AI is already helping hospitals, clinics, and doctors treat more patients daily by streamlining traditionally slow tasks through automation. Take Olive, for example, a company whose software boosts operational efficiency. AI collects and analyzes data on revenue cycles and management costs so providers and payers can monitor and manage resources more productively. Others, like CloudMedX, go a step further, generating insights to improve patient journeys across the healthcare system, promoting resource optimization. As we saw during the most dramatic moments of the pandemic, one of the fundamental problems in healthcare facilities is patient flow and the lack of available beds.

To track patient wait times, Qventus, Inc. prioritizes patient illnesses and injuries. The results are remarkable: Implementing AI at Johns Hopkins Hospital allowed them to assign beds to emergency room patients38% faster.

The reality is that highly valuable medical information gets lost in the ocean of data. I’ve mentioned several times the importance of tools to transform data into knowledge. AI does it better than us all.

Specialized companies like Tempus and H2O.ai use AI to sift through the world’s largest collection of clinical and molecular data. This is to personalize healthcare treatments. It has been used to predict ICU transfers and highlight the risk of hospital-acquired infections, among others. Additionally, automating data analysis not only speeds up processes in hospital management but also contributes to the development of more effective medications and more accurate diagnoses.

More Accurate Diagnoses

According to El País, the third leading cause of death in Spain in 2018 was medical errors. Each year, around 200,000 hospitalized patients in Spain suffer preventable harm, resulting in 50,000 deaths. Incomplete medical histories and heavy workloads can lead to fatal mistakes. It’s not that our professionals are incompetent—it’s that the healthcare system is an industry that’s incredibly difficult to manage.

A medical assistant earns an average of 1,365 EUR per month; a nurse earns 1,113.98 EUR. Both work 40 hours a week and often face understaffed teams due to unfilled absences. Properly managing this enormous workload, which often comes with significant emotional strain for healthcare workers, is crucial for patient satisfaction.

Now more than ever. The two major challenges facing healthcare services, as I mentioned in the previous article, are the growing global population and increased life expectancy. The World Health Organization projects 40 million new healthcare jobs by 2030. However, it’s estimated that 9.9 million more will still be needed to meet staffing demands. What better way to boost productivity than with AI?

For example, Viz.ai and Enlitic can detect problems and quickly notify care teams, enabling faster treatment decisions. Another valuable use of AI is virtual nursing assistants like Molly, designed to help patients manage chronic illnesses or address post-surgical needs. According to a Harvard Business Review article, assistants like Molly could save the healthcare sector up to $20 billion a year.

On the other hand, there is also progress in detecting diseases in their early stages: PathAI helps pathologists make more accurate diagnoses and reduce errors in cancer diagnoses. In the cardiovascular field, Cleerly’s AI can even assess heart attack risk. Another extraordinary case is Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which uses AI to diagnose potentially fatal blood diseases. Doctors developed microscopes that allowed them to identify and predict harmful bacteria in the blood with 95% accuracy. And there are thousands of examples available for you to explore.

This does not mean that it would be more profitable to leave healthcare workers without jobs and replace them with AI. It is impossible for a machine to duplicate the empathy and care that medical professionals provide. Our society is moving toward a society where at-risk groups will be significantly larger, so technological advancements for disease prevention and discovery of effective medications are essential.

Drug Discovery

Drug discovery involves identifying molecules with the potential to treat diseases, followed by exhaustive testing to evaluate their safety and efficacy. Clinical trials require thousands of hours of human labor, cost an estimated $1.3 billion, and only 10% of those drugs successfully reach the market.

With AI, it is possible to predict which molecules are most likely to be effective, based on large datasets of molecular and biological information. It can also be used to design new molecules optimized for specific targets, such as disease-causing proteins or enzymes. This accelerates the process to such an extent that investment in the field is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

Standout organizations include Atomwise’s AtomNet neural network and XtalPi’s ID4 platform. Its investors include Google, Tencent, and Sequoia Capital, among others.

Both assist in drug design and development by predicting bioactivity and identifying patient characteristics for clinical trials. In addition, they identify the chemical and pharmaceutical properties of specific molecules. This type of technology examines 10 to 20 million genetic compounds daily and delivers results 100 times faster than traditional pharmaceutical companies.

There are also other cancer treatment companies, such as Proscia and Deepcell. These companies use computational chemistry and machine learning tools to detect and analyze potentially cancerous cells.

Robot Surgeons

Disease prevention, more efficient healthcare management, and drug discovery are extraordinary advancements that will change human well-being. However, robot surgeons feel straight out of Back to the Future. We’ve reached the point where AI-powered machines are used to assist with surgeries, from minimally invasive procedures to open-heart surgeries (like HeartLander, for instance). According to the Mayo Clinic, robots help doctors perform complex procedures with precision, flexibility, and control that exceed human capabilities.

The first robotic surgery assistant approved by the FDA was Intuitive’s "Da Vinci", which has assisted in over 10 million surgeries to date.

Several companies have followed its lead. Vicarious Surgical, where Bill Gates is a shareholder, is among the most acclaimed. With this system, surgeons control mechanical arms from a computer console while the robot provides them with a three-dimensional, magnified view of the surgical site.

Robot-assisted surgery has led to fewer surgery-related complications, less pain, and faster recovery times.

The Future Is Here

The future has arrived. McFly’s predictions from Back to the Future are true. If technology facilitates processes, AI directly employs them. In societies where the healthcare industry faces decisive structural deficiencies, its proper functioning will depend on the continuous implementation of processes that enhance efficiency and productivity. At this rate, the health tech sector is expected to reach $280 billion by 2021, with an annual growth rate of 15.9% between 2016 and 2021.

These figures are encouraging news. Artificial intelligence provides better, faster, and more cost-effective healthcare. Without a doubt, it will have an impact we can’t yet imagine. Above all, the integration of AI into our daily lives signals a trend toward a world with more time and an enhanced professional way of life.

As I always say, we shouldn’t fear change—we should embrace it. Task automation will destroy jobs, yes, but it will likely create new ones that are far less alienating. And it will inevitably contribute to humanity's betterment.

Additional Content

• https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-healthcare
• https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/blog/hsc-what-ai-healthcare/
• https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/artificial-intelligence-healthcare/
• https://dxc.com/us/en/insights/perspectives/blogs/the-possibilities-of-ai--a-journey-into-the-future-of-healthcare

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