Public health practitioners under the aegis of Health Promotion and Education, Alumni Association, Ibadan College of Medicine, have warned people against the practice of relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in taking medical prescriptions, noting that such practice may be injurious to health.
They said the practice where people consult the internet instead of consulting qualified medical practitioners is on the rise, warning that medications prescribed by the AI or sourced online may not take recourse to the medical history of patients and may cause more harm to people.
The experts, stakeholders, leaders, and elders in the field spoke in their separate remarks on Tuesday at the opening of the 2nd Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of under the aegis of Health Promotion and Education, Alumni Association, Ibadan College of Medicine.
The 2-day Conference themed “Artificial Intelligence and Innovations in Public Health is held at Koltotel Hotel, Ikolaba, Ibadan.
Speaking, the President of the Association, Dr Bright Orji said AI has come to stay and there is a need for moderation in its usage, particularly for public health consumers, and practitioners alike.
He said the conference seeks to open the eyes of the stakeholders in the public health sector to the various possibilities inherent in AI as it relates to public health and safety and how practitioners can also leverage the tools for improved service delivery while calling their attention to the various pitfalls.
Dr Orji said: “The reason we want to do this is so that everyone is well abreast of what to do. You can observe that even the social media is being misused and abused. So it’s very important that a whole lot of information and of course, there is disinformation in the age that we live in today.
“The emergence of Covid, and Ebola taught us great lessons. In fact, during the period of Ebola people were drinking bags of salt as a way to prevent it. But you can see that that information is abused, it’s not the way it should be. So what we are doing now is to ensure that Artificial intelligence is properly deployed and also we should have regulations on how AI should really be used so that people can use it, benefit from it, and use it to improve our society and improve the lives of mankind.
“Many people believe in AI and what we’re saying is the fact that they should use it appropriately. With AI, there are so many things you can do in a second. So this is part of the benefit we want to ensure. With AI, Medical doctors going on ward rounds can be assisted to ensure that their ward round is facilitated, evidence-based, and can improve the lives of their patients using the deployment of AI.”
Also speaking, the President of the Ibadan College of Medicine Alumni Association (ICOMAA) Worldwide, Professor Emmanuel Otolorin said although AI comes with a lot of opportunities that can be harnessed, public health consumers and practitioners must also be aware that AI can hallucinate and create what doesn’t exit.
He warned public health practitioners not to fall for seeing AI as all-knowing while also assuring that AI cannot take the place of professionals.
Professor Otolorin said: “Artificial intelligence comes with a lot of opportunities that can be deployed to improve health care delivery. Yes, it might make the work of healthcare providers easier but also we have to be very careful in how we deploy the numerous tools that are available on the AI platform.
“There are tools for processes that can be applied in health care delivery and I think that we’re quite new in the process now but over time people are going to be dissecting the different applications that are there and see how they can be deployed, of course they can also be abused.
“We have to be careful that people don’t begin to use AI in place of health care workers because some AI tools, I would say, hallucinate.
“My son is a computer scientist and he actually showed me how an AI tool created a drug that doesn’t exist. And in describing side effects of the drug that actually doesn’t exist. So AI can hallucinate. So you have to be a content expert to know what it’s talking about.
“So if you use an AI tool and you ask it to do something, you have to be knowledgeable enough to know that what it had done is correct and not just adopt it.”
He said the Nigeria Medical and Dental Council will deal decisively with medical practitioners who make mistakes on account of using AI
“If a healthcare worker makes a mistake and tries to blame AI, he or she will be in trouble with the Medical and Dental Council. We go to medical school to be taught how to identify patients with problems, analyze the problems, consider multiple solutions, and choose the best option for the patient.
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“You cannot hand it over to AI and then if something goes wrong, you’ll be in problem with the Medical and Dental Council. Of course, there are many quacks out there now who are using AI. There have been quacks even before AI came on board who are masquerading as doctors they are all over the place in every healthcare profession, not just doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, and pharmacists, quacks are everywhere, and you have to be careful.
“Patients too have to be careful because there are now some people who use Google as their doctor and when you make Google your doctor, you have to be responsible for what happens to you, especially in a country where pharmacists will sell you any drug without a prescription.
“So if you go and google and say I have a headache and Google says, do this, do this, you go to the pharmacist they sell it to you and you buy it and use it, who knows what you have? Maybe you have a tumor in the brain that Google never knew about and you’re taking some drugs that Google has recommended. So we have to be very careful”, Professor Otolorin added.