Dr. Bot
Why Doctors Can Fail Us-and How AI Could Save Lives
Published on 9. September 2025
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-300-24714-5 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"[Blease's] evidence-driven sceptical approach is part of what makes this such a good book."-Nigel Warburton, New World"Blease . . . sets professional pretensions against the lived reality of patients and uses this to set out the many ways in which suprahuman intelligence is bound to serve patients better."-Richard Lehman, British Journal of General Practice
"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
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 158 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
562 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-24714-5 (9780300247145)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
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.