Dr. Oz: AI and robots can already provide medical care

AI and robotics could help reduce the obstetrics crisis in the U.S. in the next few years, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Thursday at an Axios event in Davos.

Why it matters: It's a tangible use of AI that could bring real benefits soon — better than speculating on advances 10 years from now, Oz said.

Driving the news: Oz said AI and robotics can be part of the solution for parts of America that don't have access to critical medical care, like obstetricians and mental health services.

• "Within the next three years, before our administration is done, we will be using agentic AI to accelerate our ability to take care of people, especially when they're in places where we don't have access to care," Oz said at the Axios House event.
• More than one-third of U.S. counties don't have any obstetricians, midwives or birthing centers. More than 500 hospitals have closed OB units since 2010.

How it works: One idea that has been proposed is to "use robots to do ultrasounds on pregnant women," Oz said. "Robots can do it. We already have simple systems that are effective."

• There are also technologies under development "where you can take a wand, you don't even see the image, you get digitized insights back that tell you whether the child's OK or not."
• "And frankly, I don't have to see the image. I just have to know if the image is good enough to tell me the child doesn't have a problem," Oz said.

For mental health care, "we will never, ever have enough practitioners in those areas to do this" in rural America, Oz said.

• "We have AI systems now [that] augment the ability of doctors to take care of patients by fivefold, maybe more, without burning out," he said, "helping them do much of the laborious work of collecting information, and giving them some navigation tools and most importantly by allowing or empowering patients to control their own decisions."

Context: Some states already are experimenting with AI tools for expectant and new mothers, using smartphones and wearables to monitor vitals, provide maternal health advice, book vaccinations and order tests.

• Oz's agency finalized a proposal last fall to expand Medicare payment policies for digital mental health services to include payment for devices used to treat ADHD. It also solicited feedback on how it might pay for innovative software algorithms and AI.

The bottom line: "I think talking about AI in 10 years is almost a futile effort. I think most of the changes are going to happen in three to five years," Oz said.