The impact of AI on healthcare leaders

5 ways AI will transform the healthcare industry

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence — better known to many as AI — is a branch of science that is concerned with creating “smart” machines that can perform tasks which typically require human intelligence [1]. We use AI daily from everything like Apple iPhone’s Siri to Google searches to streaming services like Spotify or Netflix. When utilized correctly, AI can also transform the healthcare industry.

Clinical Decision Making

AI can heavily influence the decisions that physicians make regarding their patients through Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools [2]. AI can help shift the healthcare industry’s focus from reactive care to preventative care by diagnosing possible diseases before onset, therefore allowing physicians time to implement interventions. For conditions like seizures, AI can offer an early warning that will help to prevent the seizure rather than deal with the aftermath of a possible brain injury [3]. For diseases like diabetic retinopathy, AI can also help decrease diagnosis time by utilizing supervised learning to predict, when given an eye image, whether a patient is afflicted with diabetic retinopathy. The physician will still be required to check the AI’s diagnosis, but this could greatly accelerate the process, leaving time for the physician to see other patients or for patients to cope with their diagnosis sooner and possibly undergo and intervention process.

Increased Surgical Precision

By collecting deep learning data from watching surgeons perform surgeries, AI algorithms can determine possible procedural enhancements to increase a surgery’s success rate. AI could also be used during real-time surgeries to determine possible other pathways in case of unexpected circumstances. Further, by utilizing surgical robots, the precision of surgeries can be enhanced to submillimeter precision, which would also increase the surgery’s success rate [4].

Better Radiology Technology

AI can “enable the next generation of radiology tools that are accurate and detailed enough to replace the need for tissue samples in some cases” [3]. By developing better technologies, scientists can formulate a more advantageous understanding of tumors’ behaviors and thereby determine therapies to help patients overcome their affliction.

Expanding Access to Medical Care

AI has the ability to decrease the repercussions of a deficit in medical staff at lower-income areas. AI can take over certain diagnostic duties that physicians typically have to perform; this will allow the physicians to attend to more patients despite the short staff. It would also decrease the need for more specialized doctors to be on-hand since the AI could diagnose certain injuries or diseases with a high success rate [5].

Wearable Technologies

Last but not least, AI can transform healthcare through the implementation of wearable technologies. AI can extract valuable information from the large amounts of data that come from wearable devices, such as smartwatches, smartphones, and step trackers. Analyzing this data can help make both patient-specific conclusions as well as broader population-based conclusions that can lead to faster diagnosis of disease or more specific treatments [3].

Final Thoughts

Overall, AI is poised to help make great advancements in the field of healthcare in the next few years. While we do need to ensure that precautions are taken to avoid the mishandling of data, employing artificial intelligence can supplement our physicians and increase the likelihood of patient survival.

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About the Author

Saloni Shah is a senior at the Harker School in San Jose, CA.

References

1. What is Artificial Intelligence? How Does AI Work? [Internet]. Builtin.com. Available from: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence
2. Kent J. How machine learning is transforming clinical decision support tools [Internet]. HealthITAnalytics. 2020. Available from: https://healthitanalytics.com/features/how-machine-learning-is-transforming-clinical-decision-support-tools
3. Bresnick J. Top 12 ways artificial intelligence will impact healthcare [Internet]. HealthITAnalytics. 2018. Available from: https://healthitanalytics.com/news/top-12-ways-artificial-intelligence-will-impact-healthcare
4. Robotic surgery: The role of AI and collaborative robots [Internet]. Robotics.org. Available from: https://www.robotics.org/blog-article.cfm/Robotic-Surgery-The-Role-of-AI-and-Collaborative-Robots/181
5. Hsu J, Undark Magazine, Jeremy Hsu, Undark Magazine. Will artificial intelligence improve health care for everyone? [Internet]. Smithsonian Magazine. 2019. Available from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/will-artificial-intelligence-improve-health-care-for-everyone-180972758/