Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us-and How AI Could Save Lives

by Charlotte Blease

Overview

How does AI compare to a doctor when it comes to saving lives? 

Doctors are under-resourced and face unprecedented levels of stress, with rising patient numbers and ever developing medical knowledge. But at the same time, they are all too human, prone to racial, class and social biases that affect the care patients receive. 

Can we improve patient experience and alleviate the burdens of doctors at the same time?

In this groundbreaking study, Charlotte Blease reveals how AI, if handled with care, could emerge as the most reliable physician in history. Drawing on interviews with authorities in AI, doctors and patients, Blease shows how technology – despite some resistance – is already making a difference. From diagnosis and second opinions to treatment and aftercare, AI has the potential to revolutionise our healthcare.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300285710
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/09/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	486 KB

About the Author

Charlotte Blease is a health researcher exploring how AI can transform patient care by changing how healthcare works, making it more effective, ethical and responsive in ways humans alone cannot achieve. She focuses on what technology can do for patients, not just how AI works. She is currently Associate Professor at Uppsala University and Researcher at Harvard Medical School.
 

Editorial Reviews

A strong case that doctors should be open to using AI to be fully effective.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Brilliant. . . . A thorough, insightful, and timely exploration.”—Kenneth D. Mandl, Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School

“Medical professionals will no doubt wince. But patients should rejoice. This is a superb vision of the future of health care. I enjoyed the book immensely. Mandatory reading for doctors and policymakers.”—Professor Richard Susskind CBE KC (Hon), author of How to Think About AI and coauthor of The Future of the Professions

“Few books manage to be this beautifully written and this unsparing. Dr. Bot is both a searing critique of medicine-as-we-know-it and a hopeful exploration of what care could become. Blease brings deep insight and rare clarity to one of the most urgent conversations of our time.”—Maxine Mackintosh, Alan Turing Institute

“Dr. Bot is an intelligent, incisive exploration of why even the best doctors are only human—and why, if used wisely, AI could transform healthcare for the better.”—Steve Stewart-Williams, Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia

“With a lively mix of medical data, ethics, and ethnography, Blease covers the waterfront of what Artificial Intelligence might mean for medicine and what to do about it. The result is a highly readable, and surprisingly human, discussion of technological change.”—I. Glenn Cohen, JD, Deputy Dean and James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

From the Publisher

2025-08-01
Does medicine need an injection of AI?

Blease, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, quotes a physician at an academic conference who says, “I save lives for a living, what do you do?” It’s a boast that few other professions allow. But it’s incomplete, because that same doctor, like others in his profession, undoubtedly lost many lives, too. Medical hubris obscures the fact that while lives are saved by skill, experience, and science, too often others suffer because of doctors’ shortcomings. Many are turning to artificial intelligence to supplement human judgment in medicine, but some in the medical community dismiss AI assistance outright. Replacing the physician with a medical robot would be a mistake equal to banishing AI from the exam room altogether, says Blease. “Today,” the author writes, “substantial research supports the observation that experts can be unreasonably biased against algorithms, favoring their own (sometimes flawed) human decision-making instead. This kind of apathy is referred to as ‘algorithmic aversion.’” Blease is cognizant that both AI and MDs have weaknesses, yet both have skills that, if brought together, would benefit patients. That’s the hope. Blease warns against naively trusting the technology; AI can make blunders. As tests and trials demonstrate, though, advanced AI can be a valuable medical technology. (According to a Pew Research survey, four in 10 Americans, Blease writes, “would feel comfortable if their provider ‘relied on AI for their medical care.’”) The mix of AI and medicine won’t replace the human doctor but can produce what Blease notes is “extended cognition: that our thinking isn’t confined to our brains but extends to the tools and environment around us.” The result: better care, and lives saved.

A strong case that doctors should be open to using AI to be fully effective.

Kirkus Reviews