Bots & Healthcare: A Digital Advantage
With the emergence of artificial intelligence into mainstream society, we’ve seen age-old human tasks overtaken by bots. The medical industry has utilized this technology in crucial ways for public health. For instance, last year UCL worked with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London to create a machine that is capable of diagnosing eye diseases with incredible accuracy. And while machine error is a problem to consider, many believe it is less likely to happen than human error.
The idea of AI and bots working within the medical industry is a goldmine waiting to be taken advantage of. Many hospitals, schools, and medical facilities are already using it to some extent. However, where are they being most effectively used?
To start, the medical industry is seeing chatbots communicate with and take care of patients in place of humans, and the results are astounding. We are also seeing bots that can be used in operating rooms, as well as those that can train doctors and nurses. While this is the most effective use of AI in the medical field currently, app developers still have some ways to go until they are optimized for efficiency.
Professional Help
Chatbots are making a strong appearance in the healthcare industry by taking the place of medical professionals. This is done largely though smartphone apps. Examples of this are applications such as Your.MD, Gyant, and more. Software like this is transforming communication between doctors and patients. Whereas a patient would have had to communicate with a doctor directly in the past, these apps can be used to monitor the progress of one’s medical condition and answer simple questions.
The benefits of apps that monitor and help people manage pre-existing conditions are best explained by Bradley University:
By allowing users to store essential information related to their condition in a digital format, everything they need goes with them to each medical visit. The app allows patients to present a complete picture of their health to their FNP or doctor so that a proper long-term care plan can be developed and any treatment changes can be implemented.
In addition to smartphone apps, hospital and care provider websites are now using chatbots to answer basic medical inquiries. Of course, these chatbots aren’t used for proper diagnoses, but they can help with basic help desk functions. They can even book appointments for patients or help in refilling prescriptions. It will be interesting to see what other processes are streamlined using chatbots in the future.
Training and Aiding Medical Professionals
In addition to patient monitoring and healthcare administration, we’re also seeing AI used on the hospital floor itself. For instance, through the use of augmented reality, bots are able to help train medical professionals. But it doesn’t stop there!
Not only does artificial intelligence help in training physicians, but it can assist in surgery itself. AI Med interviewed Tamás Haidegger of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society to explain how it works, revealing that such technology has already been helping surgeons for the last 20 years. Here, they take a look at an excellent example, the Da Vinci surgical system:
The most common platform is the Da Vinci surgical system from Intuitive Surgical that was approved by the FDA in 2000, and executes the exact motions of a surgeon. It is a calibrated system and decision-making stays with the surgeon. A human surgeon is directing the motions through a master manipulator and everything is executed at a smaller scale inside the patient.
Due to the aforementioned practice of machine learning, such systems are becoming more precise in their actions. Software developers learn from real-world scenarios and incorporate this data into the augmented systems doctors train in. This means human doctors can get near-real-world experience working on or with a patient without actually risking their health. AI is transforming surgery as we know it!
Creating With the Utmost Caution
If you are an app developer looking to create a helpful chatbot application for medical purposes, do so with the right motives. Health shouldn’t be a matter to exploit for money. Create a secure platform that keeps the information of users safe. Malicious apps weasel their ways into app stores every day, and you don’t want your app to be a security vulnerability for those using it. The stakes are high; a poorly designed medical app could cost someone their health or financial future.
It’s not only the security of a program that’s important, but also its usability. This combination is necessary if apps are truly to be the way of the medical future. A good user experience could truly streamline some of our oldest medical processes. Appnovation, a digital design firm, explained this intersection of values surrounding user experience:
We know that a digital experience, or at least the first step to delivering that, starts with … impression-building elements, but we also know that it goes deeper; if the user experience is not smooth from navigation through to transaction completion, it means nothing. Functionality will always outrank visual finery, and there should be a seamless blend of both, not a compromise of one over the other.
With care and user-oriented thought put into these applications, chatbots and AI will have a digital advantage in the medical world, which could have life-saving effects. In addition to their use in patient care and training, we have found that they may streamline important medical processes and allow things like surgery to be safer. This is the future of the medical industry.
Have you ever spoken to a chatbot about medical issues or used an app that helps you monitor your health and communicate with doctors? Do you prefer this to the human patient-doctor appointments of the past? We’d love to hear your opinion — let us know in the comments below!
