Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly revolutionizing the healthcare industry around the globe. It has arguably more to gain from advances in the latest technologies than any other sector. It’s already being put to use in various areas of medical institutions, including – monitoring health data to look for warning signs of disease, aiding diagnoses, and supervising medication and prescriptions.
Some of the major players in the healthcare market have already become a part of this on-going revolution. For instance, Google’s DeepMind Health is resolving real-world health issues by working together with clinicians, patients, and researchers.
Additionally, this tech giant has also combined systems neuroscience with machine learning (ML) to build general-purpose learning algorithms within neural networks to copy the intelligence of the human brain.
Similarly, IBM Watson is supporting this segment by applying cognitive technology and thereby offering a massive amount of patient diagnosis and health-related records. It analyzes genomic data from healthy and tumor cells and provides actionable insights in 10 minutes.
Apart from symptom checking and risk stratification, AI is already used to detect diseases, such as cancer, in the early stages. As per the American Cancer Society, a high percentage of mammograms return false reports, resulting in 1 in 2 healthy patients being told they have cancer.
However, the use of AI is plummeting the necessity for excessive biopsies. It permits both the review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster, with a 99% accuracy rate.
Likewise, the consumer wearable’s and other medical devices combined with AI aids in supervising early-stage heart disease, enabling caregivers to monitor potentially life-threatening episodes in the beginning.
Talking to the experts at the HETT 2019 conference on technology in healthcare, Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX says, AI has immense power to protect lives, advance care, and ensure that doctors have adequate time to speak to the patients. He pledges £250M to enhance the role of AI in this department.
At the same time, the adoption of AI into the healthcare segment carries some risks and regulatory issues – since any slipups may cost lives. It demands something of an equivalent revolt to take place within the relevant supervisory bodies that oversee the diligence.
In short, it’s going to take novel approaches, long-drawn-out oversight, and the expansion of new-gen medical AI specialists. Needless to say, paying for these regulations won’t be a trifling matter, either.
