JAKARTA - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that the proposal of legislators regarding artificial intelligence (AI) to be used to help analyze patient conditions should not divert the main focus, namely increasing doctors.
The Minister of Health said that the fundamental problem that must be answered is the shortage of doctors, especially in remote areas.
"I think the main priority is to get there first. That later will be added with telemedicine, AI, and other technologies, so that it does not divert our focus or attention to increasing the number of doctors and distributing them to regions," he said as reported by ANTARA, Thursday, June 25.
According to Budi, however, doctors and medical personnel must see and touch patients to conduct an analysis.
In the meeting, Deputy Chairman of Commission IX of the DPR, Nihayatul Wafiroh, proposed that AI be used to help solve the problem of a shortage of doctors. He suggested that AI be used in analyzing patient conditions.
"Can it, yes, sir, in certain areas, we can be helped by AI, at least to help our patients analyze diseases and so on? Because to bridge it alone," he said.
He admitted that he was dismayed by the distribution of doctors in Indonesia who were still insufficient. Moreover, he said, doctor education is different from other education because it takes a long time.
Therefore, Nihayatul expressed the idea of using AI to overcome the problem in question.
"If you wait, it's impossible for people to wait until they graduate. Well, can't we, with the existing technology, replace the physical presence of doctors with others? Although it is certainly not optimal, but for certain diseases," he said.
He also touched on the success of the implementation of remote operations.
"Because the Minister, when he also did a remote operation, yes, sir? Remote operation is also amazing. If it can be done with remote examination in certain areas where there are no doctors, it can also be one of the solutions," he said.
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