Cold Algorithms And Scorching Palms: When AI Healthcare Meets End-of-life Care

Cold algorithms and scorching palms: When AI healthcare meets end-of-life care

In the future ward, which is as clean as a sterile room, my father's vital signs fluctuate smoothly on the central screen. The voice of AI sounded without any fluctuations: "Based on survival rate data and resource consumption models, it is recommended to terminate the life support system. The optimal solution has been generated." I held my father's thin hand, and his pulse was beating faintly under his skin. At this moment, the algorithm's depiction of the "optimal solution" is like a cone of ice piercing into the heart - so correct, yet so cruel.

We are moving towards an era where medical AI is omniscient and omnipotent. Surgical robots control the joints through rotary encoders, and the cutting accuracy has already exceeded the limit of human hands. The diagnostic system instantly locks in the cause of the disease in billions of data, and the drug ratio is precise to the molecular level. When the disease is resolved into a pure data stream, the cure rate continues to break records. However, before the end of life, this intricate system revealed its cold skeleton.

The rotary encoder, a tiny component found in countless medical devices, has now become a metaphor for the division between humans and machines. In the end-of-life care ward, AI cannot understand why family members insist on using "inefficient" physical pain relief instead of direct sedation; In the psychiatric clinic, algorithms can identify biochemical markers of depression, but cannot read the fleeting glimmer of despair in the patient's eyes; The allocation system in the emergency room calmly schedules resources based on survival probability, without seeing the tears of mothers kneeling for their children in their arms.

When healthcare is simplified into a mathematical problem of survival probability, the wrinkles of human nature become errors that the system is eager to trim.

The monitoring device beside my father's bed suddenly emitted a regular buzzing sound, and the AI's prompt sound followed closely: "The patient has a dying throat sound, and it is recommended to inject sedatives to improve comfort." I looked at my father's face, his hazy eyes staring at the swaying tree shadows outside the window, and his dry and cracked lips moving. The nurse gently shook her head and bent down to wet his lips with gauze dipped in warm water - an action that has not been written into any clinical guidelines.

This is the paradox of AI healthcare: it can prolong the duration of heartbeat, but cannot measure the power transmitted by a handshake; It can calculate the most economical treatment plan, but it cannot account for the miracle created by the phrase 'I'm still here'.

The human doctor walked towards me, not looking at the waterfall of data on the screen, just placing his hand on my trembling shoulder. This simple touch is like a dam, blocking the suffocating feeling brought by the data flood. In the last moments of my father's life, what was needed was not a percentage of survival rate, but confirmation of his existence as a "person" rather than a "case number".

When technology rushes to the end of its life, it encounters not faults, but the boundary markers of human dignity.

The epitaph of Edward Livingston Trudeau remains resounding even after a century: "Sometimes to heal, often to help, always to comfort." In the medical temple ruled by algorithms, we need even more of those "inefficient" gazes, those "unnecessary" touches, and those respects for "irrational choices" - it is these seemingly redundant human lights that keep life warm before it fades away.

Future medical AI may be able to simulate perfect comforting words, but the real temperature in the human palm will always be the source code that cold algorithms cannot replicate. On the eternal balance of healing and care, some weights can only be weighed by the human heart.