Healthcare today faces an acute global shortage of skilled professionals. This challenge impacts billions worldwide, creating a gap in access to quality care and placing a significant burden on existing healthcare systems. The World Health Organization projects a shortfall of 10-18 million health workers. The result is that almost half the world population has near zero access to any quality healthcare, while the rest of us find it near impossible to get an equitable equilibrium between availability, quality and affordability.
At the core of this challenge lies a fundamental imbalance between elastic demand and constrained supply. At societal level, as populations grow and age, the need for healthcare services expands rapidly, while at the individual level, the demand for services can be highly elastic as no one will dream of denying the best available service to their loved ones in need. However, the supply of healthcare professionals remains highly constrained due to long training periods, limited educational capacity, and high costs.
Yet the advent of artificial intelligence, be it still in its infancy, is creating a realistic possibility to address this historic challenge. It holds the promise that one day, the elastic supply of “intelligent skills” can be made accessible and affordable to all.
This massive challenge has driven Quadrivia to build Qu, a comprehensive, controllable and customizable assistant AI, designed by clinicians for clinicians.