5 AI Trends in Healthcare to Watch Out for in 2020
This is the sixth installment of a 12-part series that follows our clinical fellow Tiffany D’souza throughout her journey with The DICE Group. This month, Tiffany delves into the trends of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
After experiencing a huge push in research and development this year, artificial intelligence in healthcare will continue to grow exponentially during 2020.
Several AI tools are already being used in medicine, and many more are ready to hit the market. As we look ahead to a new decade, here are some trends to watch out for as AI hits healthcare with a big boom!
AI will decrease the administrative burden placed on physicians
Physicians spend several hours documenting encounters, performing medical coding and billing patients. These administrative duties pull them away from hands-on patient care and contribute to physician burnout.
Luckily, many of these processes can be automated, thanks to the advancement in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms.
This not only reduces the burden put on physicians, but also saves hospitals money and time. As we move into a new decade, intelligent systems could take over these administrative tasks, freeing up physicians to work more directly with patients.
Leveraging AI in diagnostic medicine
From symptom analysis to prognosis, AI is already a formidable competitor in the diagnostic game, with many models making predictions with near-perfect accuracy. 2020 will see more research, implementation, validation and approval from the FDA to use AI as a diagnostic tool for a range of diseases.
In fact, some AI models can already predict the onset of breast cancer up to five years in advance. Another tool on the market can quickly diagnose Tuberculosis by analyzing images of chest X-Rays. Healthcare is already leveraging AI, ML and deep learning in diagnostics, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down in 2020.
Sharing healthcare data across organizations
The potential of AI in healthcare is astounding. However, for artificial intelligence to work as intended, health systems need access to comprehensive and clean data.
That’s why there will be a big push in 2020 to share data from electronic health records, wearable devices and prescriptions across institutions. This could be a huge challenge, but moving towards a unified database will allow hospitals to see a more complete picture of each patient’s health, which may lead to better diagnoses and medical decisions.
Increasing access to healthcare
AI could bring affordable, user-friendly healthcare into areas that need it through chatbots, wearable devices and even smartphone applications.
These tools will become more commonplace in 2020, allowing people to self-screen at home, without ever stepping foot into a doctor’s office. This could bridge the gap in health disparities from one zip code to another and make medical care more accessible.
Personalizing treatment plans for oncology patients
Precision medicine is the next big medical technology trend for 2020, and oncology patients stand to see a huge benefit.
By analyzing a patient’s unique genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors, precision medicine leverages AI to predict how oncology patients will respond to specific drugs and treatments. This field will continue to flourish in oncology next year and has the potential to forever change how doctors approach patient care.
2020 will be a great year for AI in healthcare. Even though we’re still learning how to best leverage this technology, there’s one thing we know for sure. AI is here to stay and will reshape healthcare over the next decade.
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Tiffany D’souza
Tiffany is completing a Healthcare Innovation Fellowship at The DICE Group before applying to her residency. She is also an online fitness coach and social media marketing consultant who loves baking cookies, solving crossword puzzles and exploring the potential of healthcare technology.
