10 Common Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care
Many industries have been hit by the advent of new technologies in the information age. Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare is no different. Particularly in the case of automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and industries associated with health care have all been affected — in many cases other industries in very positive and significant ways.
According to a 2016 report from CB Insights, 86% of health care provider organizations, life science companies, and healthcare technology vendors use artificial intelligence technology. By 2020, these companies will spend an average of 54 million on artificial intelligence projects.
So what solutions are they usually implementing? Here are 10 common ways AI is changing health care now and in the future.
- Maintaining medical records and other data
Since the first step in health care is compiling and analyzing information (such as medical records and another past history), data management is a widely used application of artificial intelligence and digital automation. Robots collect, store, re-format, and trace data to provide faster, more consistent access.
2. Doing repetitive jobs
Robots can perform tests, x-rays, CT scans, data entry, and other mundane tasks faster and more accurately. Cardiology and Radiology are two disciplines where the amount of data to analyze is huge and time-consuming. Future cardiologists and radiologists should look only at the most critical cases in which human monitoring is useful.
3. Treatment design
Artificial intelligence systems are created to analyze data — notes and reports — from a patient’s file, external research, and clinical expertise to help you choose the right, individually customized treatment pathway.
4. Digital Consultation
Apps like Babylon in the UK use AI to provide medical consultation based on personal medical history and general medical knowledge. Users report their symptoms to the app, which uses speech recognition to compare it with a database of illnesses. Considering the user’s medical history, Babylon offers recommended action.
5. Virtual Nurses
Startup Sense.ly has developed Molly, a digital nurse who helps people monitor the condition of patients and follow treatments between doctor visits. This program uses machine learning to support patients, specializing in chronic illnesses.
In 2016, Boston Children’s Hospital developed an app for Amazon Alexa that provides basic health information and advice to parents of sick children. Application Answers actions Ask questions about symptoms and whether a doctor needs a visit.
6. Medication Management
The Patient Institute of Health has developed a unique app to monitor the use of a patient’s medication. The smartphone webcam has partnered with AI to automatically verify that patients are taking their prescriptions and helping them manage their condition. The most common users are people with serious medical conditions, patients who go against doctors’ advice and participate in clinical trials.
7. Drug Creation
It takes more than a decade and billions of dollars to develop ce actions through clinical trials. Making this process faster and cheaper can change the world. Amid the recent Ebola virus threat, an AI-powered program has been used to scan existing drugs that can be re-designed to fight the disease.
This type of analysis usually finds two actions that reduce the risk of Ebola infection in one day, and this type of analysis usually takes months or years — a difference that can save thousands of lives.
8. Precision Medicine
Genetics and genetics look for mutations and links to disease from information in DNA. With the help of AI, body scans can detect cancer and vascular diseases in advance and predict the health risks people will face based on their genetics.
9. Health Monitoring
Wearable health trackers — like Fitbit, Apple, Garmin, and others — monitor heart rate and activity levels. They can send alerts to the user to get more exercise and share this information with physicians (and AI systems) for additional data points on patients’ needs and habits.
10. Health Care System Analysis
In the Netherlands, 97% of health care invoices are digital. A Dutch company uses AI to sift data and help area health care systems avoid unnecessary patient hospitalization to highlight inefficiencies in treatment and workflow.
These are a sample of the solutions AI provides to the healthcare industry. As innovation pushes the capabilities of automation and digital workforce from providers like Novato, more solutions are possible to save time, lower costs and increase accuracy.