Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla is famous for predictions that have helped usher in the high tech world we live in today — and made him very wealthy in the process. On Wednesday, he made another bold forecast: A fully computerized doctor could be seeing patients before the decade is out.
“Within 5 to 6 years, the FDA will approve a primary care app qualified to practice medicine like your primary care physician,” he said onstage at the STAT Breakthrough Summit in San Francisco.
Khosla’s prediction comes amid brimming hype around the potential of artificial intelligence to improve health care. Though there has been a flood of scientific papers this year weighing in on the potential of generative AI, Khosla has for years argued that health care will be transformed by technology. Perhaps his most famous speculations on the subject came in a 2016 paper titled “20 Percent Doctor Included,” which predicted 80% of what doctors do could be replaced by technology.
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