[TLDR: Saving lives with research is not always about tons and tons of information. It’s about the right information at the right time in the right place with the right humans. Some knowledge needs to come from far corners of the world.]
“This bacteria does not respond to any antibiotics in a lab.”
Those are not the words you want to hear as a mother of a very sick 3 year old in the hospital. Those were the words I heard two decades ago.
The resident then said, “In a study of 900 people around the world, it has been found that really high doses of this antibiotic kicks the immune system into gear and the immune system takes over.”
Indeed that’s exactly what happened. Our child recovered.
I know our family was exceptionally, extremely fortunate. So many children die of much less complex things. 50% of children with that particular case at that time did not survive. That’s part of the reason I do the work I do today.
There were 6.7 billion people on the planet at that time, and yet it was a small group that made a huge difference. A thoughtful clinician doing the best research he possibly could to find options for us, the senior pulmonologist who agreed to deviate from the standard of care and use an antibiotic at a much higher rate than was understood at that time, the world class hospital staff that kept my child alive long enough to figure out options, the pharmaceutical availability, the researchers who documented that known finding, and the 900 patients from around the world who shared their experience — together they all changed our whole family’s life. They likely changed many other families lives. The right care at the right time anywhere in the world for all of us requires global collaboration.
A few questions come to mind for me today with AI:
- Would I have trusted that treatment recommendation if it had come from an AI system and no human was in the loop?
- Would AI help us surface more possible treatment plans?
- How does liability work for the clinician making that career-threatening choice?
- How does the patient know what this actually means? Should they know what it means? Did I know how the other research was conducted and whether it was sound? Did I understand the extent of what could happen? Clearly my husband and I gave consent. What did informed consent mean?
When I talk about global cooperation in Kisop, this is one of the things I’m talking about enabling more broadly — the sharing of life-saving knowledge in an ever-evolving planet.
You can read more about AI and antibiotic resistance in posts like this one.