Dr. Vaishaly Bharambe
14-Aug-2025
Discover how AI in healthcare is transforming medical practice, surgery, patient monitoring, and hospital management—while balancing risks and benefits.
Inputs by: Dr Vaishaly Bharambe, MBBS, MD, PhD – Anatomy Counsellor and Medical Educator and Founder: VB Anatomy Academy (YouTube channel)
Healthcare is on the verge of a game-changer and AI is driving this change. From powering breakthroughs in medical research to helping medical students get instant, accurate answers and even guiding surgeons mid-operation, artificial intelligence in healthcare is rewriting the rulebook.
In this conversation, we’re diving into AI’s impact from two big angles:
First, its influence on the education and training of medical professionals and
Second, its role in the day-to-day functioning of the practitioner—whether in the clinic, the operating theatre, or the hospital system at large.
AI promises efficiency, precision, and better patient outcomes. But alongside its benefits, there are cautions. Done right, it amplifies human skill and sharpens decision-making. Used carelessly, it risks eroding the very qualities—critical thinking, creativity, and independent judgement—that define the best in medical practice.
AI’s Impact on Medical Education
In medical education, artificial intelligence has become an ever-present companion for today’s students. Instant access to answers, polished explanations, and concise summaries appears to be a blessing, but it also comes with a hidden cost.
In the past, an unanswered medical MCQ meant long hours of flipping through textbooks, cross-referencing lecture notes, and reasoning through each option. Now, with a quick paste into an AI learning tool, a student can receive not just the correct answer but also a neatly packaged explanation, bypassing the very process that strengthens problem-solving skills. A similar pattern emerges in topic exploration. Students once sifted through multiple books and journal articles to form their own synthesis; now, they often rely on AI for a ready-made summary.
AI in Diagnosis and Treatment
AI in healthcare is making remarkable advances in diagnostic imaging—X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs—by analysing pixel-level patterns invisible to the human eye. A system trained on millions of chest X-rays might detect the faint shadow of early-stage disease that a human radiologist could miss. The strength of AI in medical diagnosis lies in precision and speed, making it an excellent screening tool. Yet diagnosis is more than pattern recognition; it requires correlating findings with symptoms, history, and context. That nuanced reasoning, developed through years of clinical experience, remains uniquely human.
Examples of AI applications in modern medicine:
In pathology, AI can examine digitised slides with exceptional consistency, spotting malignant cells, grading tumours, or predicting genetic mutations from microscopic features. In microbiology, it can read culture plates, identify organisms on stained slides, and flag unusual growth patterns in seconds. These AI-powered diagnostic tools in healthcare speed up reporting and reduce fatigue-related errors, but final interpretation still depends on the pathologist’s judgement.
AI in Medical Practice
In medical practice, artificial intelligence in healthcare has emerged as a powerful clinical decision-support tool—analysing patient data to suggest diagnoses, flag high-risk trends, and monitor chronic diseases. Electronic health record systems can detect early sepsis in a child before symptoms become obvious. AI-powered healthcare apps track blood sugar in diabetics or monitor asthma symptoms in children, generating real-time alerts for both patients and doctors.
AI also supports paediatric growth and development assessment. However, potential risks include automation bias in medical decision-making, algorithmic gaps for under-represented populations, and AI healthcare data privacy concerns.
AI in Surgical and Anesthetic Practice
In the operating room, AI in surgery is redefining precision. Robotic surgery extends the surgeon’s hands with mechanical stability, while AI surgical planning tools offer guidance, predict complications, and issue intraoperative alerts to the surgeons.
In general surgery, AI helps map tumours in 3D for complex resections. In obstetrics and gynaecology, it predicts risks like postpartum haemorrhage. In ophthalmology, AI detects retinal changes and guides precision laser therapy, while in ENT surgery, AI navigation systems map sinus anatomy to avoid injury. During operations, AI-assisted surgical robots steady instruments, highlight safe dissection planes, and warn of proximity to vital structures. AI in anaesthetic monitoring tracks vitals in real time, adjusts medication dosing, and predicts complications before they occur. Postoperatively, AI algorithms can flag early signs of infection or poor wound healing.
AI in Patient-Owned Monitoring Devices
AI-powered patient monitoring devices such as continuous glucose monitors and ambulatory blood pressure trackers now enable 24/7 health surveillance. Artificial intelligence in remote patient monitoring analyses trends, detects dangerous patterns, and sends alerts for early intervention. Benefits include early warning systems, improved disease control, fewer hospital visits, and greater patient engagement. However, drawbacks such as false alarms, patient anxiety, and health data privacy concerns remain important considerations.
AI in Hospital Management and Operations
AI predicts patient volumes, manages bed occupancy, and optimises operating theatre schedules. It forecasts medication needs, automates reordering, and speeds up administrative tasks like coding and insurance claims. It can detect early outbreaks of hospital-acquired infections and support patient engagement through reminders and follow-ups.
The Power of AI at the Point of Care
OpenEvidence, an AI-powered clinical decision platform in the U.S., draws from over 35 million publications to provide fully cited answers in seconds. Used daily by over 40% of U.S. physicians, it exemplifies how AI bridges vast medical knowledge with real-time clinical decisions.
Conclusion and Caution
Artificial intelligence is not the enemy of medicine—it is an ally when handled with discernment. Its proper role is to reduce unnecessary labour and extend human expertise without replacing the process of reasoning. Over-dependence risks eroding clinical skills. In a crisis where AI is unavailable, will clinicians still function independently? The challenge is balance: embrace AI for its strengths, remain alert to its weaknesses, and never let it replace the thinking and adaptability that lie at the heart of good medicine.
Cover Credits: Pexels
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