Over the past few episodes in this Freakonomics Radio Guide to Getting Better,
we've looked at a variety of things that may produce a longer and healthier life.
Nutritional supplements, faster drug approvals, figuring out the secrets of the gut microbiome.
And today, in the final episode of this series,
we'll look at something that intersects with all of those things and maybe a trillion more.
Today's topic, how artificial intelligence will change healthcare.
And why is the healthcare system in need of change?
If you look closely, you'll see a bizarre split.
The advances in medicine and medical technology over the past century have been mind-blowing,
but the way these advances are delivered to actual patients can be also mind-blowing,
but in a bad way.
I have the ability to put a patient on heart-lung bypass where their organs are literally failing and we're able to keep them alive.
It's truly some of the most ambitious technology humanity has ever created.
And yet the way that I find out that someone had a heart attack is still through a pager and then I have to go and say,
hey, who here is having the heart attack?
The healthcare system has so much technology slop that it can be hard to see just how good the actual medical technology is,
but that may be about to end.
If you think about it, this is the biggest experiment in the history of medicine.
And the experiment is already underway.
The moments where I feel like I'm really doing science is when I genuinely do not know the answer to the question,