Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning In Healthcare

As discussed in the previous article healthcare and technology have come much closer together during the pandemic. Most technology solutions (like telemedicine and remote diagnostics) have provided the increased capacity of healthcare workers. Some have achieved ease of use (like IoT monitors for blood sugar, and health tracking apps). All technology solutions in healthcare, besides their usefulness, collect a huge amount of digital data.

One sector of IT, however, is promising to utilize this collected digital data and take healthcare and life sciences to a totally new level. This is artificial intelligence and its branch – machine learning.

Here is how: 

AI Helps Prevention

It has been estimated that a person will generate one million GB of health-related data during her lifetime. This information is critical for health monitoring and prevention of disease. With the digitalization of this data, the challenge is how to utilize it in a meaningful way. 

AI again provides the solution. With its ability to process a large amount of data, AI becomes a powerful tool for risk screening, condition monitoring, and general illness prevention. It has been determined that AI algorithms are much superior 

AI Helps Diagnostics

AI helps process huge amounts of data much faster and with greater accuracy than humans can. Hence AI eradicates tedious tasks in diagnostics and improves results. An AI solution for diagnostics of breast cancer was able to detect 92.4% of cases, compared with 73.2% results achieved by human diagnosticians. The bottom line of involving AI in diagnostics is a reduction of costs, increase of productivity and capacity, improved results. This actually translates to better healthcare, than previously available.

AI Helps Cure

We are all aware that most drugs while providing a cure for a given illness, tend to cause considerable side effects to other body systems. With its ability to process large amounts of data fast, AI is providing the building blocks for patient-specific drugs which have been custom designed for her specific DNA. This will both enhance the positive effects of medicine, but will also decrease, or eradicate altogether the negative side effects.

Efficient Healthcare

As mentioned above, AI and machine learning are a blessing for the efficiencies in prevention, diagnostics, and cure of disease. AI makes all these processes much leaner, more efficient, and cost-friendly. What it also does is to make the healthcare administration also much more efficient and fast. AI can process vast medical records in an unstructured format. AI can assist physicians with fast, accurate, and timely data management and individualized treatment plans. Doctors may now focus their attention on more substantial matters and not be “buried” in administration. 

AI is still in its infancy. Currently, the world (and healthcare too) is using only elements of AI. It is not without reason, however, to state that just as the first industrial revolution greatly increased the strength, accuracy, and speed of human muscle, so will the AI industrial revolution greatly enhance the human brain, cognitive and processing power. Healthcare is at the forefront to benefit from future AI developments.