This is Science Friday. I am Ira Flato. When you go to the doctor's office, it seems like the

face-to-face time is getting shorter and shorter, isn't it? Sometimes you're in and out in under

ten minutes. The experience can feel very impersonal. My next guest says that one of the keys to

bringing back the human touch to medicine is AI, artificial intelligence.

Sounds counterproductive, does it, that an algorithm can increase empathy?

But the less time that your doctors need to deal with charts or sorting through conflicting

diagnoses, the more time they have to spend with you.

Plus, now you can track your own heart rate with your smartphone.

Computers are reading medical scans and detecting cancer.

Will this new data make medicine more personalized, or will it be information overload?

My next guest says AI can give you more time with your doctor,

if it's done correctly. Dr. Eric Topol is here to talk about all of this. He's a cardiologist

and author of the book, Deep Medicine, How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human

Again. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. Great to be with you.

You say that patients exist in the world of what's called shallow medicine, insufficient data,

time context and presence. What do you mean by that? Well, shallow refers to that lack of

human bond, the very limited time to see a patient,

the limited time to formulate a diagnosis, review the data, have the context,

and most of all, the deterioration of the relationship between patients and doctors.

That's really suffered over time because of the big business of medicine.

So what are the consequences of practicing shallow medicine?

Well, besides the fact that doctors and all clinicians become data clerks and are tethered to keyboards,

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