AI in Medicine: A Personal Story
It’s always important when discussing new technology to include test results, demo results, and any other relevant points of proof. As a very wise man once explained to me, “One test is worth a thousand experts.” That piece of sage advice is second only to the motto of The Don Sullivan Show podcast: “All At-Bats Are Situational.” As the varied audiences remember, I think in sports analogies and metaphors.
When discussing how machine learning (ML), colloquially referred to as “artificial intelligence,” is bringing revolutionary advancements in medicine to the world, I’m compelled to put forth the best test case that I can imagine—me. And since the situation that I will now openly refer to constitutes the most important at-bat of my life, this is entirely appropriate.
I have a serious spinal injury. Strangely, at the moment, the experts are unable to narrow down the time frame of that injury with any specificity. The injury likely occurred sometime between 1970 and 2022. This one is problematic. The medical team doesn’t believe that the unavoidable neurological catastrophes that will inevitably occur are imminent, and I’ve been advised that as long as I can tolerate the accompanying back spasms, I can continue to climb mountains (I live in Colorado), fly on planes (first class is better), and do whatever else I want to do. That will all come to a screeching halt at some point in an uncertain future. The danger is caused by the scar tissue that is pressing on my thoracic spine. The surgeons know how to fix it, but the surgery is life-changing. So, I don’t want to do it. That’s where the interesting part of this story starts.
The acceleration of the capabilities in medicine thanks to modern technology is extraordinary. The capability of materials science, microscopic tools, imaging, and, most significantly, ML to perform analytics has advanced medicine more in the last decade than in the entirety of preceding human history. One of the most interesting and potentially human experience-changing technologies is known as nanotechnology, which loosely refers to the manipulation of matter smaller than 100 nanometers. Nanoparticles and materials and the respective engineering through nanotechnology allow for use of these particles in a plethora of medical endeavors. The reader may remember the joy expressed by Larry Ellison when he described to President Donald Trump and the White House media in 2025 the potential of the Stargate project.
The development of methodologies, tools, and paradigms able to hunt down single cancer cells within a patient’s blood stream before those cells can combine and create malignancies seems like a discussion that would involve Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock as opposed to Sam Altman. It is, however, very real in 2026. The initial notion may be to consider the ultimate goal to be the manufacturing of targeted medicine and even functional tools on a scale that can only be observed by an electron microscope, but there is so much more. These particles will be able to collect data and feed it back to a central source, the “edge computing” within. And that data can then be used as source data to be fed into computers using ML, directed through the wisdom of experienced physicians, to customize certain pathways and approaches to address an individual’s particular condition.
Ellison gleefully described technology that would be available in our lifetimes that could “develop a customized vaccine in 48 hours.” This is not science fiction. This is the good side of creating single computers the size of college football stadiums, powering them with their own personal nuclear power plants, driving them with hundreds of thousands of the most sophisticated processors ever conceived, and feeding them all with infinite amounts of data, every day, forever. I don’t grasp why we decided to use a term stolen from 1950s cartoons, that is “artificial intelligence,” to describe this amazing paradigm of data analysis, but I didn’t get a vote.
Returning to my personal story, it is, currently, both hopeful and grey. Nanoparticles breaking down scar tissue is not a future technology; it is happening now. Scar tissue is a naturally occurring response to any tissue injury, both internal and external, to any living being. I have experienced this phenomenon many times. Physical therapy, medicines along with normal activity, and significant amounts of old-fashioned hard work are usually sufficient to “break up” scar tissue, allowing the patient to return to mostly normal pre-injury condition.
However, this process may take days, or it may take years. Nanoparticles can be targeted within the body to reduce recovery times of any injury or surgery. ML can allow the attending physicians to direct the particles more effectively, and it’s even possible that the particles could share data amongst themselves, all combining to reduce the healing process by multiple orders of magnitude.
Unfortunately for me, my medical team doesn’t believe such technology will be available soon to address the scar tissue growing on my spine. It seems to them the space is to be confined, and there are just too many variables that must be considered when performing such surgery. I, however, disagree. Perhaps this reflects our different professions. Skilled spinal neurosurgeons have their view. My view, however, as a technologist, is very different. Or maybe I have spent too much time listening to Mr. Spock during the past 5 decades. I do know for a fact that technology gets better every day that we wake up. It is with that certainty that I’m going to wait as long as possible and climb as many mountains as I can find before I have anyone perform 10 hours of microsurgery on my spine. Bring it on.