100 books like Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

This book explores how AI is transforming healthcare and the potential benefits it can bring to patients and doctors.

The author, Eric, is a cardiologist with working knowledge of technology of AI. I love how he describes with clarity, the present and potential to make people healthier with AI First thinking. That is, how AI can make the business of health care human.

I love the premise and basis of Eric’ thinking that we can make healthcare personalized, proactive, anticipatory, helping people live healthier lives and reducing the cost of healthcare. 

At the same time he is mindful that AI could be used to dehumanize healthcare and exacerbate existing inequalities.

I met Dr. Wachter, at the University of California in San Francisco and we were discussing the applicability of technology in a patient’s hospital room to improve care. 

I was introduced to his book and was mesmorized. It was one of my early conversations from a clinician stressing that we need technology, computers to be invisible not irresistible in healthcare.

He writes compelling stories about medical errors which only by the stroke of luck didn’t cause a fatality.  It reminded me of my sister-in-law who was misdiagnosed as being Type 2 diabetes when she was Type 1. 

This misdiagnosis could have proved fatal. The proper use of AI, especially the current wave of generative AI could have made a huge difference.

The opening paragraph of this book is pure poetry in motion, putting me in a trance and craving to read the entire book. 

You wouldn’t know this is a book about neuroscience when reading the opening lines in Chapter 1. Connectome is a thought-provoking exploration of the brain's neural connections and their potential to transform our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. 

Given that artificial intelligence is inspired by neuroscience it’s a great book to understand how the brain works.

I must confess the book title drew me to the book as I sought to understand and learn more about the ethics of the misuse of AI. 

Having worked on committees in the AU and advised various entities in the United States, the subject of ethics is front and center. The expanding use of large language models and rise of generative AI makes the potential for harm stronger than ever.  

AI is poised to change our lives and society in ways we have not imagined much like the iPhone when it first arrived. Understanding its potential is useful but understanding its potential for harm is mandatory. 

I found this book to be enlightening on the ethical components of AI and technology.

This book is a brilliant ethnography and one of the first books I read as a young anthropology student, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.

It is about a Hmong family, living in California, that has an epileptic child and their interactions at a children’s hospital. The book came back into my life when my second daughter started having seizures and we were admitted into the same children’s hospital where the book was researched.

One of the doctors knew I was an anthropologist and reminded me of the book. Despite the cultural difference between myself and the Hmong family, I could see myself in their fear, their hope, and their desire to make sense of having a very ill child.

So many history books about medicine in the early modern period focus on London and other English urban centers. Withey’s book allows readers to move beyond the metropolis and glimpse sickness, disease, and medicine in a largely rural setting. It challenges readers to move beyond the concept that rural medicine was dominated by folklore and magic, Wales was not insular or remote but connected to broader medical trends in both Britain and Europe. This book illuminates how the ‘Welsh’ body was perceived: strong, robust, possessed of a hot choleric temperament, and a fondness for toasted cheese. And paints a clear picture of the men who made their living treating these bodies.

Nobody is perfect. But in medicine, not being perfect can cause injury in another person, or even death.

In When We Do Harm, Ofri tells the stories of patients who fell victim to medical errors, conducting root-cause analyses of how errors occur in the complicated practice of medicine, and the mundane interventions and cultural shift that will be necessary to prevent them in the future.

It’s not an easy puzzle to solve.

During the past twenty years, hundreds of studies have found that practicing medicine with compassion, caring, and good information-sharing brings significantly better empirical results than usual. In short, relational dynamics affect our measurable physical condition. For instance, biopsy wounds and surgical wounds heal faster if the patients receive compassionate care from their doctors and nurses. Similarly, diabetes patients receiving compassionate care are far less likely to develop metabolic complications. These relational findings should revolutionize medicine, especially considering the hefty savings in healthcare costs. For now, though, “Research shows that physicians routinely miss emotional clues from patients and routinely miss 60-90% of opportunities to respond to patients with compassion.” These two doctors write in an enjoyable conversational style, sharing their own stories as well as the irrefutable data.  

The defining text of the topic of law and medicine, written by one of the nation’s premier bioethicists, Menikoff’s compendium of challenging cases and analyses is as relevant today as it was when first published two decades ago. Serious students of the subject matter will appreciate both the nuance and thoroughness of this short yet comprehensive volume.

The book starts with a wife asking her husband who else he would sleep with, if he could. I loved this hook which any one of us might ask in a casual way, anticipating our partner to say ‘only you, darling!’ When the husband doesn’t give the expected reply, it unsurprisingly opens a can of worms which kept me turning the pages. This compulsive, sexy, roller coaster of a story didn’t disappoint me.