According to a report by venture investor Mary Meeker, the impact of digitalization has been increasing since 2013, and the number of healthcare data is increasing by 48% every year. Given all this, in order to produce a revolution in the healthcare sector, the means of information processing based on artificial intelligence will be needed.
Here are some examples of how artificial intelligence can change the healthcare industry in the next five years.
In short on AI development
“Smart” medical products, services and processes are already being developed by such companies as IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, General Electric and many others: according to the research company Venture Scanner, there are more than 800 of them. Companies from the USA, Great Britain and Israel are most active.
Analysts from IDC have calculated, that by 2018 30% of medical organizations will offer clients services based on artificial intelligence. In this article we will tell you that intellectual systems are able to do today, and who is engaged in their development.
Processing of patient data
Part of the diseases, such as cancer, can be defeated if in time to recognize non-obvious symptoms and begin treatment. According to Google, every tenth patient suffers from a misinterpretation of medical information.
Artificial intelligence can solve this problem. Smart developments for assessing the patient’s condition and preliminary diagnosis are offered to Google (Deepmind Health) and IBM (Watson Health).
Google Deepmind Health analyzes the available information about the patient’s symptoms and provides a list of recommendations. The doctor, using the tips of a digital assistant, prescribes a course of treatment.
IBM Watson Health also helps diagnose: recognize vein thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, heart attacks.
Evaluation of medication influence
Artificial intelligence allows to evaluate the effect of medications on the patient’s body. For example, in the medical center of Vanderbilt University, the AI algorithm helps doctors better understand, how the genetic characteristics of the patient affect the course of the disease, and what effect the new drug will have.
Agency Frost & Sullivan notes that the technologies of artificial intelligence increase the accuracy of diagnosis by 30-40%, while the cost is reduced for half.
Conducting diagnostics
Modern technologies allow finding the solution of an appointment problem. One of the ways – mobile telemedicine (mHealth), reinforced by the possibilities of artificial intelligence. mHealth involves the use of smartphones and wearable devices (for example, “smart” watches or fitness bracelets) to assess a person’s health.
There are other similar services. They are able to diagnose complex diseases: for example, diabetic retinopathy. Or even predict possible heart problems in outwardly healthy people.
Special care is required for people who have recently been discharged from the hospital. For them, the Sense.ly application was developed, the basis of which is the same artificial intelligence.
Smart blood analysis
The more doctors have information about the root cause of the disease, the more effective the treatment. In this they are helped by “smart” systems for analyzing the genome. One of these services is Sophia Genetics. The analysis of DNA allows to reveal predisposition of the person to a number of diseases: stomach ulcer, diabetes and so on.
Also worth noting are the projects of Human Longevity and Deep Genomics. Their task is the primary gathering of information and the creation of a “genetic” database. Even today, you can pass a sample of genetic material and get a detailed report with an analysis of its genome.
Personal doctor 24×7
In particular, the MedClueRx project from the NorthShore medical center allows you to determine which medications will work best for depression, epilepsy, infectious diseases and gastrointestinal problems.
Another service is MedWhat. He partially replaces the personal doctor.
This is a mobile application with speech recognition. But also is interested in the state of health the day after the treatment.
A similar solution was introduced by Microsoft Corporation this year. The service is called the Health bot and uses the same speech recognition technologies as the Cortana digital assistant.
Selection of individual treatment
Systems based on artificial intelligence can process thousands of pages of text per second in search of the right information. This is useful in modern realities – no doctor can cope with the rapid analysis of such a number of medical publications.
According to Delve Health, approximately every 20 minutes in the world there is a new medical article, and in the MEDLINE catalogue, only 870,000 references were added last year.
Therefore, doctors need a decision support system (Clinical Decision Support System, CDSS) based on artificial intelligence. CDSS combines information from the patient’s medical history, indicators of his health, data from medical reference books and recent research.
After that, artificial intelligence is looking for dependencies, assessing the impact on health of even such factors as temperature dynamics, noise level and air quality in the place of residence.
Conclusion
Now we are only at the beginning of the path of revolutionary AI developments. Many of us already use its analogues, such as personalized Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant or any of hundreds of Chatbots.
The medical sphere should start the process of digitalization and introduce AI. The possibilities of artificial intelligence will help not only patients and physicians, but also the medical institutions themselves.
About the Author:
Ashish Sharma is the Chief Marketing Officer at WeDigTech, a Hub Of App Developers India. He is responsible for marketing activities that have to do with creating, communicating and delivering offerings that have value for clients or business partners.
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