AI in Guyanese Medicine

Both President Ali and Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony are absolutely right to be enthusiastic about artificial intelligence (AI) being introduced into our medical system. We would be foolish to watch this technological revolution pass by while continuing to diagnose patients with yesterday’s tools.
The Ministry has already moved beyond the PowerPoint stage with the help of NY Mt Sinai Hospital to implement AI-assisted interpretation of X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs at five hospitals, with plans to expand it to public facilities equipped with digital X-ray machines. The technology is intended to assist Doctors rather than replace them. That distinction is important, with AI being used as an exceptionally well-read junior Doctor in the room – not as the Doctor.
We in Guyana have an unusually good reason to take this technology seriously since our problem has never just been a shortage of buildings but rather the difficulty of deploying specialised expertise within reach of a population scattered from Georgetown to the Rupununi and from Mabaruma to Crabwood Creek. Telemedicine is already operating at one hundred thirty-five locations, connecting hinterland health workers with Doctors elsewhere. AI could potentially amplify that network by helping frontline workers identify abnormalities, flag risks, and decide when specialist intervention is required.
But there are challenges in the excitement that must be identified and addressed. AI is only as intelligent as the information available to it, and it is very encouraging that we are acquiring AI while simultaneously building a national electronic health record system. That system is intended to allow medical histories, laboratory results, imaging, and prescriptions to follow the patient rather than disappearing into separate paper files that may never even see the inside of filing cabinets.
And this is where the real revolution may lie, with patients in Lethem or Barima no longer being effectively strangers to the Doctor who sees them in Georgetown. Imagine their previous tests, medications, diagnoses, and risk factors being available immediately. Then add AI capable of identifying patterns across that information, which would then move healthcare from repeatedly treating the latest complaint toward detecting disease before the patient reaches the hospital.
But there is another distinctly Guyanese danger: buying the machine before fixing the house. AI cannot compensate for poor data, unreliable connectivity, inadequate maintenance, insufficiently trained personnel, or weak clinical protocols. Nor should an impressive percentage of an AI diagnostic system become an excuse for allowing machines to make unreviewed clinical decisions. Medical AI has already raised concerns internationally about real-world performance, bias, transparency, and inadequate clinical validation. The sensible model is therefore not AI instead of Doctors, but AI plus Doctors plus better data.
The Ministry is also training a new cadre of digital health specialists, with the first 15 graduates completing programmes this year to support electronic records, telemedicine, and AI-supported systems. That may ultimately prove more important than the software itself.
There is also a larger opportunity that has been seized by President Ali, deploying oil revenues to finance hospitals, equipment, and specialist services. But while we can leapfrog some of the technological stages through which richer countries painfully passed, the objective should not simply be to have a health system that looks modern but one that produces measurably better outcomes, with the emphasis on “measurable”.
That means publishing the results about how much diagnostic accuracy has improved, how much time has been saved, how many unnecessary tests have been avoided, how many cancers, strokes, heart conditions, and other diseases have been detected earlier, and, most importantly, how many patients are actually healthier?
Finally, we must concede that we have often imported sophisticated tools only to discover that somebody forgot the maintenance contract. We should therefore not make AI another expensive digital gadget sitting in a room while the health system around it remains analogue. As such, while the Minister’s focus is welcome, the real test of our AI revolution will not be whether Georgetown can demonstrate an intelligent machine but whether ordinary Guyanese – whether in Sophia or Sawariwau – will get faster, earlier, safer, and better healthcare because of it.
That is the intelligence that matters.