Artificial intelligence is a technological advancement which can be applied to different industries (and provide a competitive advantage over robots). Artificially intelligent algorithms facilitate decisions relating to robotic tasks and technologies, and will soon be in use in a wider number of industries (1). In the health sector, artificial intelligence will enhance services by creating awareness of factors such as side effects, location, and location segmentation, increase efficiency, and effectively handle the transportation of supplies. By integrating AI, health institutions should prepare for a future of improved health services that is affordable and comprehensive for all.
Why AI in healthcare?
The current global health system presents issues related to access to health care, data collection, analysis, and information retention. Further, healthcare remains a largely unstructured system requiring both basic and complex and urgent actions. As such, artificial intelligence will play a vital role in orchestrating resources in the health sector.
If you look at similar medical processes such as cancer screening, the AI system can easily handle the matter because it searches for the relevant records, understands medical conditions, and generates an accurate result for every test under both current data sets and future data sets. This solution augments and improves the current quality of healthcare using machine learning.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence uses algorithms to make predictions that are typically less complex and require less training, allowing for more accurate decisions to be made. According to Anand Agarwal and Bhaskar Chitnis (2), artificial intelligence can be defined as systems which are designed to combine “learning and logic” to perform tasks that can be performed by people without any extra training.
The application of artificial intelligence can be divided into 4 major categories:
Identifying medical conditions
Machine learning can be applied to identify diseases and their signs, providing healthcare professionals with the necessary knowledge to deal with the issue. Analysing medical records
Machine learning can be applied to interpret medical records, including bills, prescription claims, and millions of other documents in medical centers. Machine learning can be used to find trends among them and “Backtest” a clinic to figure out if the surgery, medication, or treatment given to a patient yielded the desired result. Analysing medical databases
Medicine cabinets tend to contain a large volume of medical records, with trends and context. Machine learning can be applied to comb these databases to uncover rare occurrences and patterns in medical data.
How will AI impact health care?
Artificial intelligence will act like a computer consultant for numerous processes, resulting in an accurate diagnosis with a high probability of success. It will recommend steps and technologies to prevent and treat a medical condition. It will provide a detailed and complete report based on outcomes and provide a means of continuing care for patients. Further, it will allow the establishment of an electronic health record system to store, retrieve, and manage medical information.
For example, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH, GE Healthcare has used a machine learning program called “Precision Digital Healthcare” to train AI-powered machine cameras and interpret X-rays, allowing the clinicians to locate tumors, perform surgeries, and deliver medications quicker and more accurately.
In the future, artificial intelligence will be used in every clinical area of medicine, from the non-cureative areas such as eye surgery and cardiac medicine, to the therapeutic areas such as cancer and research medicine. For these technologies, doctors and healthcare professionals must adapt and train their AI systems to better prepare them for the future.
In the short-term, artificial intelligence in healthcare will minimize the time and cost of development and implementation of new technologies.
Given the increasing complexity and number of opportunities AI presents to help doctors provide more accurate diagnoses, prevent disease, and overcome major challenges, many researchers hope that artificial intelligence in healthcare will enhance medical information and transform the treatment of the growing inequality.
Reference
Agarwal, A., & Chitnis, J. A. (2013). Artificial Intelligence as a Practical Approach to Medical Decision-Making. Future Medicine, 39(2), 380-418.
Shafer, M., & Hastings, D. (2015). The future of medicine. Massachusetts: MIT Press.