Gilanthony Ungab M.D. Email & Phone Number

“It’s time to put the power of AI/Machine Learning in the hands of clinicians to provide better care” JAMA March 2018 compared healthcare spending in the US with the healthcare spending of a select group of the 10 highest income countries. They report that the United States spends nearly twice as much and performed less well on many population health outcomes when compared to the other high-income nations. Concluding, that prices of labor and goods (including pharmaceuticals), and administrative costs as the major driver of the overall difference. It’s the same blame game we hear. However, from my view as a physician there is more to this problem. I think JAMA is forgetting that, we are seeing larger than ever expanding gaps in care. Adding 20-25 million newly insured patients to our previous fee for service system is taxing on clinicians and undermining the practice of maintaining quality and Societal Guidelines at the point of care. Yes, we have increased the pay of primary care and added a large workforce of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants to accommodate this influx of patients. However, we did this without any tort reform and without any new technologies to make the practice of medicine easier in an industry with rapidly advancing science and technology. Why are the editors of JAMA not asking? Are we paying for the right medications? Are we following guidelines? Are we doing our best to prevent the more costly and catastrophic bad outcomes? As a physician, I see how we have not afforded this new work force of primary care the tools to help them perform the right preventive interventions or follow the guidelines in this new overburdened and time limited healthcare system. We live in a world of Google Maps, Uber, and Yelp, but not in healthcare. Why is the power of machine learning and cloud computing not afforded to those clinicians that need to keep us healthy? We at Lucia are going to change that…