Navigating Medicine’s Future: Why AI Is the New Stethoscope for Doctors

[00:00:12] Welcome to the AI-Ready Doctor, the show that simplifies artificial intelligence so you can use it your way right away. In this first episode, you're going to meet the voice behind the mic, Dr. Hassan Benchikram, a critical care physician, educator, researcher and the kind of leader who's not just talking about AI. He's using it to bring purpose back into medicine. How are you, Dr. B? Are you excited?

[00:00:39] Dr. B? I am excited. This is not the first time that I go on video, but this time it's a podcast that is something I'm looking forward to bring in some of my knowledge to others for AI and anything related to AI. Amazing. So take us back to September 2021. What was happening in your life at that moment? What was the breaking point?

[00:01:07] Looking back, what did AI started giving you that medicine maybe wasn't at the... Dr. B? So, September 2021. Wow. It seems like yesterday, yet it's such a long time ago. We have lived multiple lives since then.

[00:01:26] I think I have, as a physician, two specialties, critical care and pulmonary, both of which were called in on this unprecedented, never heard of new lane. And so I was working 24-7. I don't mean to put a damper on it, but there was a lot of death around me.

[00:01:47] And I needed to find purpose. I couldn't save people. I couldn't do what I do best. Even my knowledge was not completely useful. We just started to hear about what it is. Is it transmitted via this or that, droplets versus air? We were all confused.

[00:02:10] And in the midst of charts, resuscitating people, speaking to families and drinking cold coffees, I didn't find AI. AI found me. And it provided me with something new that I saw the potential for. However, while medicine gave me purpose and courage, AI gave me margin.

[00:02:37] And quite frankly, a bit of hope that it wasn't crazy to feel stuck. It feels almost like something new that I can dedicate. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that during that time, I was almost lost.

[00:03:01] And while I was an ICU doc by design, I figured that AI was there not to replace me, but to augment what I do. And that's the reason why I wanted to do this podcast. It was, I mean, people told me, write a book, but I don't want to sound like I'm talking at people. I want them to feel like I'm on their side as if I invited them to my home and we are just chatting.

[00:03:26] So they hear what this AI is about. What are the questions? Sometimes people are not even aware that they should ask out loud and maybe how you can bring it into your life. Beautiful. And so in terms of AI, how do you envision this? Is it for medicine specifically or are you interested in sharing AI to anyone, anyone that's not in medicine?

[00:03:56] How does this look like for you? I think what is exciting for me is when I have spoken to multiple people in my entourage about what I do with AI. They didn't emulate me. They did not do what I shared with them. They applied it to their life. And it's exciting to revisit with them after and find out what they've done with it.

[00:04:23] An example is I used it, for example, to, I don't know, plan trips. And when we were at a conference somewhere else, I used it to tell me in the next two hours that I have free, what can I do to enjoy the environment within some of the restrictions that I had, whether it is car or transportation or access or preparation or what to wear.

[00:04:50] When I shared this with one of the conference attendees, they used it in finding activities to do with their two year old child. And it was just a whole different way to use the same thing. So is this for doctors only? No. Will it be mostly infused with flavors of medicine? Absolutely. I do need to stay true to myself.

[00:05:15] But this is for anyone who's a bit intrigued, a bit excited and a bit nervous about what AI could mean into their personal life. That's amazing. I feel like we're so integrated with AI already, but at the same time, it's only just starting. So it's exciting to see how far this goes. In terms of medicine, how does that look like?

[00:05:39] I don't really even know how the use of AI can be applied to medicine. Where do I start? Imagine your loved one is in my ICU and I'm your intensive care doctor. Not to tempt the fates or anything. But imagine that you are in such a shocked place.

[00:06:04] You don't even know what to do, what to handle, how to even start with this, what to ask the doctor. And imagine you just pull up an AI tool I would share with you that knows everything. And yet it's there at your fingertip and you don't have to perform or use the right words or anything. It will understand you.

[00:06:30] And after 10 seconds, it could give you the questions to ask the doctor or how to speak to your family about these news that you just heard or how to organize your thoughts because you're asked to make a decision about surgery or no surgery. Right now, I'm a doctor and my own loved one, my father is in the hospital. And I had to make various decisions.

[00:06:57] Yesterday, I had to talk to my nephews who are various ages, but they're young in their life. So how to choose the words, the right words to speak to them, how to ask questions about the surgery that's coming up. These are things that are deeply related to my life, yet they are in medicine at the same time.

[00:07:23] Imagine everybody else doing this and feeling that they are now able to come up with these things. Perhaps something else. If a patient asks me, what are the chances of my loved one to come home? And people don't read the textbook. They don't come specifically in a classic presentation.

[00:07:46] So can I rely on AI to perhaps put all of the data there and give me a reasonable prediction based on all the studies before? What is the survival? What is the risk? What is the benefit? What is the best way to move forward in this case? Not in general, based on thousands of patients, but in this case.

[00:08:10] And sometimes, even as a doctor, I am not in a place where I can speak to people because I have 30 patients to round on. So my brain cannot come up with the right words to use to comfort, yet remain honest. So I sometimes ask AI to give me wording to incorporate. Is it AI speaking to my patients? No, because I'm the one uttering those words.

[00:08:38] I'm the one putting them in context. But who of us has not felt that a friend was there to tell them, just you're okay. Just say this or don't say that because it might be hurtful or use these words. Who of us has not been in that situation where we wished we had that friend to tell us? And so this is similar to that. It helps me augment who I am as a doctor. Does it replace me? Absolutely not.

[00:09:06] I'm the one who talks to that patient and asks them about their children. I'm the one who comes in and says, is anyone caring for your dog? I know you have a dog. The human part, the compassion part is ours. But some of that can be used to help us. You touched on a very interesting point. And I was going to ask about that because some people fear that AI is going to replace us.

[00:09:30] But at the same time, you brought like how the compassion is ours and we guide the tool that AI is to work for us. So would you say it's like an assistant or would you say it's like an extension of our brain because we put our data in it?

[00:09:55] Or how would you describe it from your own perspective to others that don't really know what to think about it? You're asking a very thoughtful question. And that is, would I ever walk into a room with a patient in to do a procedure or anything without gloves? No.

[00:10:16] How do we expect to walk into a complex system knowing that there is an assistant that can help and just ignore it because we're afraid? That's like saying I'm afraid from the radiation of x-rays and what would you do to my patients? So I'm just not going to use x-rays and just rely on my educated guess. Nobody would do that. In med school, they gave us a stethoscope and says use this to save lives. You're going to need it. Well, it's 2025 now.

[00:10:45] And you better believe that AI is the new stethoscope. So it isn't magic. I don't even know if this is intelligent. It is a smart calculator that you can use to solve math equations quickly. Do you not have the knowledge? Sure, you do. But a calculator in a crunch would help you reach it faster and quicker and more accurate.

[00:11:11] And like your peers, nurses, doctors, educators, do you feel pushback from them? Do they support? What is it like? It's a very difficult space because there is a lot of hype around it. What I aim to do is give it a face and give it applications that go beyond just I don't know about AI.

[00:11:41] The minute I hear that from somebody, I say, well, can you give me two minutes and I can share with you a few things. And you tell me if this is going to be, I don't know about AI or wait, that's AI. That's my favorite reaction is wait, that's AI. Why?

[00:11:59] Because when you tell somebody you're going to use a program that somebody else coded and put together on your phone to purchase tickets to travel somewhere. Before the age of apps, we used to say wait, no, I have my own travel agents, I can talk to them.

[00:12:24] Nowadays, it seems almost silly not to use a travel app to even compare prices and look up tickets. And which one do you use? Someone who's never used apps of travel before will tell you, well, they're all travel apps. What's the difference between them? I don't get it. Only after you use this one versus that one that you start to say, well, this one gives me more of what I need. But your friend tells you that one gives me more of what I need.

[00:12:52] But you can only know that if you actually used it and gotten to know the bells and whistles. So when my colleagues and friends very judiciously are very cautious in using it for patients, I actually love that. And I respect them for that because our oath is first do no harm. So before you plunge into it, make sure you understand what are the guardrails within which to work.

[00:13:21] That's where I come in. Almost like bring in a space where it is safe to try so that when it comes to the real deal, you know what to do. And honestly, if you're a medical student listening to this, you know the best thing you can is to learn about AI before it comes to a patient because AI is not the future. It's already here. It was here yesterday. It's in our electronic medical records.

[00:13:49] It's built in in our social media. We are using it. So before it's everywhere and you're compelled to use it and now it feels defeatist. Start by using it now in things that are inconsequential. Like I look the other day at the pantry and says, hmm, I have these tomatoes, this cilantro, this thing.

[00:14:15] Give me a recipe that I can make within 30 minutes of Mediterranean flavor using only these ingredients. And now we joke and call it the Chachi PT soup. It turned out to be really good, by the way. Yeah, I was going to ask you actually, but you beat me to it. I was going to say, what would you what what would you say to those that wanted to start but didn't feel tech savvy enough to to start?

[00:14:42] But a recipe is it's actually a wonderful suggestion. A recipe travel plans. I no longer just go out to eat without asking AI to give me options. I give it the context. I have people from out of town coming to visit me. They are of this culture. They have these restrictions of food.

[00:15:11] And we are in this zip code. And we would like to over two hours, go somewhere, have gourmet food and come back. Do not use Yelp or Google reviews. Use only expert culinary sources and give me five choices. Classify them by how close they are to what I asked you. And then I just look them up quickly, make a reservation and off we go.

[00:15:39] And nine times out of 10, it's always a hit. Always. Wow. I guess it's because you can be so, so specific with it. No, that the answer can come back like just exactly what you needed. It thrives with the restrictions that you give it. It performs with more details you give it.

[00:16:05] And a lot of people when they tell me I don't do tech, I'm not a techie person. I say, neither am I. I'm a doctor. Has nothing to do with tech. It's actually the reason why it's good because it's not called natural language tools for no reason. You can speak to it in natural language. Okay, Dr. B.

[00:16:28] So now that we've spoken a lot about AI and I'd like to know a little bit about who are the people behind you, who inspire you, who motivate you. What is Dr. B like behind the AI? Goodness. Who's behind me? Well, a village. It's a golden question because this is not a one man show.

[00:16:58] I may be the face talking but behind me are my family. I have always been very close to my family. My father had been a teacher so teaching is in my veins. It comes naturally to me. All of the people that witnessed me fall and supported me and pushed me. I have physicians that inspired me.

[00:17:27] One in particular in my residency in New York. She pushed me super, super hard to believe in me and to pursue the ICU pulmonary career. My partner, kudos to all of the partners and spouses and extended family because we bring with us all our insecurities, all our hurts. And they give us that buffer, that space.

[00:17:56] And they make us believe that we can do anything. My dogs, who love you unconditionally that moment to enter the house and then jump in everywhere. And my social community, both online and around me, neighbors and patients even. My family, extended family back in Morocco. And to be frank, some people that I don't know.

[00:18:27] And that sounds weird. But in the end of my medical school in Morocco, I was in the throes of planning my trip to the U.S., taking boards, defending my thesis, graduating. And all of that came to a halt on a random Tuesday when I had a head-on collision. I was the passenger in a car. I had brain injury. I almost died. I had surgery on my brain. I was afraid to lose memories. I was disfigured.

[00:18:57] And there are angels that stood along the way that helped me that I don't even remember the face of. But somehow my soul remembers them. And those as well, I give credit for because they supported me through a moment where I was extremely vulnerable. And that gave me a different take on how to approach being a physician.

[00:19:21] And then my faith, my spirituality is the sort of wrap around all of it. Every time I find myself in front of something that is bigger than me, I just look up and say, I trust you. And those are all people and, you know, entities and powers behind me that led me to where I am today. And I couldn't be more grateful.

[00:19:50] Thank you for sharing that. I think that's a very good combination with the topic, you know, having, you know, we're speaking about AI, but also about something greater that, you know, drives our spirit or our humanness to share, you know, this wisdom. So you could have written a book. You could have gone on a speaking circuit. Why did you choose this format? Your voice unfiltered.

[00:20:21] Why now? I will share with you. I wish I had all that answer figured out. The best that I can say right now is I could still write a book, but then I wanted to reach people that may or may not read a book. I could have gone on speaking engagement, but I didn't want that to be attached to. I paid to hear you speak.

[00:20:47] I wanted the access to be wide because I may be the one with the mic right now, but I think I'm speaking for every health care professional that has whispered ever. There has to be a better way. And if we can bring this to everyone, it's worth it. The one thing I'm afraid of is someone to listen to this and say, wow, he's got it all figured out.

[00:21:15] Please know I'm standing on the shoulder of every person who gave the grace to grow in this moment. The engineers that put their heart into machine learning and deep learning, the people that I've learned from, the people that supported me. Nobody has it figured out. And I think by now we know that. So I wanted to give a human face to this and say, if you're intimidated, so am I and so was I. You don't have to see the entire staircase to take the first step.

[00:21:48] Hmm. I like that. And when you sit down and record this podcast, who are you really talking to? What do you hope they, the people that are listening feel when they hear your voice? My faith teaches us humility. That is one of the top virtues that anybody could have. I'm not talking about modesty.

[00:22:15] I'm talking about humility, the power to remind yourself that you may have something, but there are a lot of people that have also something. So first person I speak to is me.

[00:22:27] I need to keep learning and keep up with the oath that I gave to my patients in my community that I will be the best doctor that I can be for the sake of my patients, because we are their best and sometimes their only chance. I have to keep learning and who else? All my community.

[00:22:51] Anybody who feels that this could help them, whether it is patients, friends, my medical students, my residents, my colleagues, and anybody else out there who is thirsty for something positive, something that can move us forward without having to worry about, you know, what's the agenda behind it.

[00:23:13] I have no reason to share my knowledge other than I'm a son of a teacher, but at the same time, I see the potential to do good. And that's who is this for. That's who I'm aiming to reach. And if as Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of what is success, if one life has breathed better because you have existed, that is success. That's really nice.

[00:23:43] And in terms of AI, how does a bright future look like? That it's applied in a way that it's like making humanity better or the world better, systems better? I think it's going to find its niche and its space. One of the spaces in which it helps tremendously is predictive analytics.

[00:24:10] And it's happening now, not in the future. I work as a tele-ICU doctor. And if some AIs are integrated with EMR and not the AI hype that we see on horror movies of the future, I'm talking about machine learning program that can detect what the naked eye cannot see, put it all together.

[00:24:34] And as I'm logged in to see my patients, it would organize those patients to me in terms of who is the most urgent to be seen because they have a risk of this or that. We already have analytics that can analyze cough and tell us whether that is cough that is typical of COVID or cough typical of TB or cough typical of asthma.

[00:24:57] We have analytics that tell us this person in the next few hours based on my analysis of their labs and their vital signs and their history is at risk of a cardiac arrest in the next few hours or at risk of sepsis, which is a complication of infections that goes beyond the source and takes over the entire body.

[00:25:19] If we are able to get these analytics and be upfront and proactive to implement anything that would help our patients, that is a bright future that is actually here and tomorrow that can be good for humanity. And then extrapolate that to anything else, whether it is economics, whether it is in fashion.

[00:25:46] I want to see what's the avant-garde fashion that might be because this is the predictive analytics of what people like about colors. What is the color next year going to be? Is it mauve? Is it taupe? Is it lapis, not blue? And so on.

[00:26:05] I think that the practicalities are endless if we were to see the best in it or it's just an individual part where somebody I mentored last year told me you have given me the best gift, which is time with my son. He's a baby and I will not have him. He's a baby and I will not have him a baby all my life.

[00:26:31] If I were to get time back to spend with him, that is precious. And that has happened. And that is a gift you cannot put any price on. And in a personal sense, what is your favorite tool? And do you use it for fun? I use it for a lot of things and fun is one of them.

[00:26:59] So one of the tools, and this is not disclaimer, I am going through training programs with some of these tools. For example, for medicine, I'm a digital health fellow with Doximity and I'm participating in the creation and the testing of those tools that will help my colleagues.

[00:27:22] I'm also a fellow business fellow on Perplexity, which the reason why I looked there and applied is because Perplexity is one of the programs I use. And I don't Google anymore, I Perplexity. I put things in there that instead of having to click on links and spend time. I feel like I read somewhere recently that in 10 years, the generation is going to look back at us and we're going to sound like we were digital cave people.

[00:27:52] Because you mean to say you were putting your question in a website that gives you 100,000 results that were curated by some algorithm and you had to click on each one of them, read them, and then you come up with a summary? This is so archaic. And they would be right because Perplexity skips all of that. There's no way a human can do a search of the Internet everywhere in a few seconds and come up with every results possible. But AI can.

[00:28:22] So one of my favorite tools is Perplexity for that. The searches it gives me, I mentor people that want to get further in life, college students. And one of them yesterday, I said to him, I'm going to sit with you for the next hour. I'm going to give you a rapid fire. I'm going to, you're going to start tomorrow rounding with this person. And you can't just stop them all the time and say, what was that? What did you say? That's just so 2024.

[00:28:50] You need to come up with it on your own. Let's use Perplexity on your phone. And that way you can keep up with the conversation without having to, well, I joke when people ask me, can you tell me what you meant by that? I turn to them and say, are you using me as your personal Google? I'm expensive for you. You may actually want to use Perplexity or other searches in order to find what you want.

[00:29:14] And finally, coming from Morocco and having to learn so much in a new culture, new language, it was hard to ask all the time and to feel like no matter how smart you are, you were feeling always behind. AI democratizes all of that. It gives the tools back and the creativity I see unleashed is extraordinary.

[00:29:40] And so that is, on a personal level, what I hope to see in the next, not even a few years, just a few months. So do you think it's making people smarter? Or like, is it helping students be brighter and better students? Or is it actually making them lazy or pulling them back because it's so readily available for them, the information?

[00:30:09] Your questions are clever, but they met their match. I think the reason why I say that is because it all depends on us. If my students came to me and I said, don't use AI, well, they're going to use it anyway. 68% of students around the world, not just in the U.S., are using it, just not talking about it. So what I do is, for example, I would create a project and I would add to it all of the material I want them to read.

[00:30:36] And then I give them a link to that project and say, use this AI. But now I want you to give me the rationale of the answer you give me. That makes them think. That makes them integrate that into their answers. So if we're not careful, we might fall into the trap of people using it to, well, skip steps.

[00:31:01] If we are smart and wise, we would actually give it to them so they, one, learn how to use it, and two, how to think for themselves because now they're integrating the answer and making it their own instead of just copy-pasting it and relying on AI detectors to find fraud. There is nobody that can fraud a rationale of something that would be theirs in their own life.

[00:31:31] That's how I use it when I teach. Amazing. I wish I was in university when all these tools were available. I think that, like you said, your thinking capacity can grow and your creativity can grow because information is information and it's there anyway in whatever form. So if you can access it in a quicker way and work on your capacity to analyze further,

[00:31:59] then it will probably be very prosperous. But, okay. And lastly, what makes you feel AI ready today? I don't know that anybody is going to be AI ready, but I feel like I am as close to ready as possible. And this is not an AI-powered podcast, by the way. It is powered by community. It is powered by coffee.

[00:32:29] It is powered also by our needs. And I feel ready because I combine being in the space of medical education, medical practice, medical research, and someone who uses AI in the trenches. So I know that of which I speak. I don't know everything there is to know, but that's the exciting part, isn't it?

[00:32:57] I can only show you the way and then sit back and see how you use it and revel into, oh my God, look at what they did with this. I would never have thought. The first time that one of my colleagues came the next day and told me, I have used AI last night to create a story within 10 minutes to read to my child in bed.

[00:33:25] He's a famous, just absolutely loves Superman, Captain America, and Winnie the Pooh, and loves space. So I combined all of this and I asked AI to give me a child's story and I read it to him last night. He was giggling and that just, I just looked up then how much is AI used for this?

[00:33:51] And it turns out it is the top use around the world for AI, is to create customized stories for children. So I'm just so, I'm going to marvel at how many things I don't know, but I am ready in showing people how to reach these and not to be intimidated

[00:34:16] and how to make them their own while safeguarding their privacy. And I'm going to share with you the first advice that I give anyone. Is AI safe? Not always. We have learned that even our phones, we suspected for a while, now we know, they actually listen in on us, record us. Somebody somewhere is listening to those recordings. So this stuff is real.

[00:34:45] But what I do set as an advice, get yourself an email address you don't use anywhere that doesn't have all your history, all the attached documents you receive from friends or from a bank or anything. That's the email I use for all my AI tools. It might show my profile as a user of AI tools, but in case there's a day where there's a glitch and it has access to my email,

[00:35:15] it won't find much to hack. And so that is one of the first tips I give to anyone that I work with is to get an email address and use it for that and not give it to anything else. That way you have some control over what you allow AI tools to have access to. Wow, that's amazing. That's an advice I've never heard before and I'm definitely taking that advice because it's, you know, prevention.

[00:35:46] Prevention. Thank you so much, Dr. B. Well, that's a wrap on episode one of the AI Ready Doctor. In the episodes ahead, we'll break down the essentials of AI in medicine without the jargon, without the hype, just real conversations, clinical insight, and practical guidance to help you build AI confidence one episode at a time.

[00:36:14] Make sure you follow or subscribe wherever you're listening. And if this episode sparked something for you, share it with a colleague or a friend or a family. You can also visit our show's website, AIReadyDoctor.com to learn more. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time on AI Ready Doctor. Thank you, everybody. And send us your favorite skeptic because curiosity is contagious. Catch it here every episode.

[00:36:45] Thank you so much.