B Complex

I felt an ulcer pop up all of a sudden the other day. I generally run all health problems, major and minor, with my mom. She is no doctor but she always provides great advice.

The moment she saw this, she said – “Vitamin B Complex is what you need.” She had experienced this before and the solution was simple in her mind.

So, I went to a Walgreens nearby and stopped at the consultation area for a second opinion. The doctor looked at it and said it was a result of heat or stress and I should either let it be or apply some dental numbing agent. I decided to ignore the advice and try the vitamin anyway. What followed was the closest thing to magic I’d experienced in a long time.

By the time I’d chewed the B Complex tablet, 95% of the ulcer had gone away. Amazing.

Diagnosis isn’t easy and doctors get good at it with experience. Most doctors don’t have enough of a breadth of experience in the simple ailments to get them right. This is where artificial intelligence could play a huge role in solving human ailments.

Imagine the following workflow – you take a photo of the ulcer, computer vision identifies it, artificial intelligence suggests a solution and you walk over to your pharmacy to get it.

(This is an example of a technology driven healthcare process )

All technology has two sides and the other side of the AI coin is what we’ll do with the humans who lose their jobs. That is why we need more experiments like the universal basic income pilots in Finland and Hawaii.

But, the positive of the AI era is that we will likely see a step change in the quality of healthcare available to people around the world.

And that’s a wonderful thing.