Doctor will see you now
of texts, leaving the app to decide how urgent the situation is and recommend the right help.
But will patients accept the prospect of having to deal with an app rather than a human when they need medical advice?
Ada’s chief medical officer Dr Claire Novorol, who has worked as an NHS paediatrician in London, says there is a pressing need for patients to become comfortable with these types of smart technologies but is quick to point out they don’t provide a definitive diagnosis without any human involvement.
“Ada’s AI tech doesn’t attempt to provide a definitive diagnosis without involving a human doctor in that process,” she says. “Instead it performs a detailed AI-driven assessment and creates a report outlining possible causes of the symptoms and information on appropriate next steps.”
Over the past five years the Ada app, which was built to support doctors in reducing misdiagnosis, has been trained to assess thousands of potential symptoms and conditions – but is there anything that ‘she’ can’t advise on?
“Ada is already very knowledgeable about a large number of conditions but is still learning about others,” says Dr Novorol.
“It’s a little like how a human doctor spends six years at medical school and learns a lot but, once they start practising in the real world, every day they are learning more and gaining in experience.
“They also have to keep up to date with new knowledge, so the learning process is never finished. One big difference between Ada and GPs is that, while a very busy GP might see 50 or 60 people in a day, Ada assesses several thousand patients every day and that number is growing.”
But doesn’t the accuracy depend on the ability of the patient to describe their symptoms? “The information provided is from a patient perspective and will naturally be limited. Ada takes this into account when suggesting possible causes and only ever provides an estimate of how likely a condition might be based on the information provided. This is never definitive and should not replace professional advice,” says Dr Novorol.
However patient groups have branded the prospect of having to type in your symptoms and wait for a result “frightening” and “ridiculous” and have asked whether lives will be put at risk.
The British Medical Association has warned systems such as Babylon Health’s 111 non-emergency chatbot on trial in north London could result in more people being sent to busy GP or A&E services who don’t actually need treatment. Or conversely, that serious conditions could be missed.
Daily Express GP Dr Rosemary Leonard is also sceptical. “A lot of medicine isn’t as straightforward as the tech nerds would like to believe,” she says.
Ada is free to download and use. Telemedicine consultations are £14.99 per consultation. For more information visit ada.com Stockists: Holland & Barrett, sport retailers, wiggle. co.uk, and beet-it.com