MEDICAL AI: A NIGHTMARE FROM BRAZIL

This story shared by J.M.T. caught my eye, not because of what it says, but what it does not say, and what that omission might imply about the motivation of the class of billionaire-busybody-ghouls that are plotting out so much technocratic mischief for the planet. Here's the story:

Brazilian Woman Dies After AI-Powered Hospital Failed To Remotely Transfer Her To ICU Unit

The story, on the surface, is simple:

Psychologist Rebeca Cardoso Tenente Molina, 32, died after spending about 5 days waiting for a transfer to an intensive care unit (ICU) bed in Minas Gerais. The case occurred after an hospitalization in São João Nepomuceno, in Zona da Mata, and air transport to Oliveira, in the Center-West of Minas, on Saturday (6).

The delay in finding the vacancy and the distance between the two cities led the family, who are from Mar de Espanha, to question the functioning of the new system of the Central Operations for State Regulation (Core/MG), replacing SUS Fácil.

And a picture of the unfortunate Ms. Molina follows.   It would appear, at first glance, to be a simple but sad story of a very quick worsening of her condition before any medical relief could be planned and deployed.

Enter the Artificial Intelligence component of the story:

With the clinical worsening, Rebeca began to require an urgent transfer to an intensive care bed. The family even went to court to try to expedite the vacancy.

The ICU bed was only made available on June 6th, in Oliveira, approximately 300km from São João Nepomuceno. According to the family, a task force was organized to transport Rebeca by private plane to the municipality.

She was transferred, but died a few hours later. The cause of death is still being investigated. According to the sister, family members are still awaiting clarification on what caused the rapid worsening of the clinical condition.

Since May 19, Minas Gerais has used Core-MG, a new state bed regulation system, which is centralized in Belo Horizonte. The platform uses technology and artificial intelligence to assist in classifying patients and setting priorities for transfer.

Rebeca’s family claims the severity of the case would not have been adequately reflected in the system. According to Sâmela, the patient received a score considered lower than the clinical condition observed by the medical team, which would have impacted her position in the regulation queue. (Emphasis added)

Her twin sister is then quoted as saying the following:

“What we saw was that doctors lost the autonomy to say whether the patient was very serious. The one who has to accept whether the patient is serious is no longer the doctor who is there experiencing that patient’s reality, it is Core. That’s why my sister was in a very severe grade, she would be in a 10, and the system only accepted her as a 6.8. So she couldn’t run in the right system because a patient 8, a patient 6.9 would pass in front of her. And the system wouldn’t accept increasing her severity inside because of the tests that were constantly feeding him.”

And from there follows the usual governmental, bureaucratic shuffle, which amounts to the usual admission of responsibility without culpability or any other change, "so sorry your twin sister died; she did not meet the criteria; the system works as designed; please accept our gift basket for your family and its loss":

In a statement, the Minas Gerais State Health Department (SES-MG) reported that Rebeca was immediately registered in the regulatory system and that, given the unavailability of beds in Juiz de Fora, the search was expanded to other regions of the state, including the supplementary network.

The ministry stated that the choice of destination hospital is not defined exclusively by geographic proximity, but by the availability of beds compatible with the patient’s clinical need.

According to the secretariat, the current system has not changed the care criteria or the methodology for searching for vacancies. The state government also reported that regulation continues to be carried out by regulatory physicians responsible for evaluating each case and seeking the most appropriate healthcare resource.

Here I have to indulge in a bit of high octane speculation of a very grizzly nature, for the bureaucratic non-response might be disclosing the truth: the system is working exactly as it was designed to do; it is making life-or-death triage choices that allow the physicians and bureaucracy to wash their hands of complicity in causing death or even having to make such decisions. One wonders, therefore, if there might be secret protocols in such medical AI programs, protocols that include the individual's profession, or age, or culture, or sex or any number of other non-medical data points in the award of the final "score" for a bed and placement in the system. A 32-year-old female psychologist? If there were such secret protocols, she probably would not "score" as high as the hyper-tensive nuclear physicist working in the University of Minas Gerais on anti-gravity.

The more I hear of such stories, in other words, the more I am becoming convinced that they are not anomalies, but the desired outcomes.  If so, it's one more reason to insist upon real human beings for medical care, and that includes the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are bad enough when they're human.  Just imagine a health care bureaucracy run by AI, and you have all the efficiency of the postal service, all the warmth and sincere compassion of an ice cube in Nancy Pelosi's cocktail, and all the human responsiveness of a corporate customer service desk, i.e., none at all.

See you on the flip side...

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