The proliferation of new technologies in the information age has turned several sectors upside down. The same applies to healthcare. Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and other healthcare-related businesses are all impacted by automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), often more cheaply and significantly than other sectors. Approximately 86% of healthcare organizations use artificial intelligence technologies. These companies will invest an average of $54 million in artificial intelligence initiatives over the coming years.
So which solutions do they use the most? Here are 14 ways AI is already impacting healthcare and will continue to transform it.
- Robotic Operations
Robotic surgery speeds up and improves the accuracy of surgical procedures. Many people are afraid of using surgical robots in healthcare because they believe that AI-controlled robots can decide how a procedure should go. Robotic technology assists surgeons in finer and more precise surgical movements; the operation is still under the supervision of one person. For example, the Mayo Clinic in Florida is using AI-powered robots to help perform abdominal procedures and is developing more for brain surgery.
- detect fraud
Many states offer health entitlements to their citizens to allow them access to medical care even if they cannot pay the high price. However, medical claims can be made fraudulently, resulting in hundreds of dollars in annual losses. AI solves this problem too. Fraud can be prevented with AI automatic damage assessment. Machine learning models powered by AI can quickly score, approve, and pay for valid claims by identifying invalid ones. On top of these insurance claims, AI helps with additional fraud detection. It can uncover unpaid bills for patients and protect their personal information from theft.
- Manage data and medical records
Data management is the most widespread application of artificial intelligence and digital automation, since the first step in healthcare is collecting and evaluating information (e.g. medical records and other historical data). Robots collect, archive, format, and track data for faster, more reliable access.
- plan of therapy
Artificial intelligence systems are designed to evaluate data, including notes and reports from patient charts, external research and clinical experience, to help select the best and most personalized course of therapy.
- online consultation
Using artificial intelligence, apps like Babylon in the UK offer medical consultations based on users’ medical histories and accepted medical practices. Users enter their symptoms through the app, which uses voice recognition to compare them to a database of complaints. After that, Babylon offers a suggested course of action, taking into account the user’s medical history.
- Nursing Assistants Online
AI systems eliminate the need for on-call virtual nursing assistants. Virtual care assistants could help the healthcare sector save $20 billion annually by communicating with patients and directing them to the most appropriate care facility. You can monitor patients, respond to their queries, and provide immediate, real-time responses. Most virtual care assistant applications available today enable patients and healthcare professionals to communicate frequently and consistently. There is less risk of unnecessary hospitalizations or readmissions since this occurs between patient visits to their doctor’s offices. In addition to scheduling doctor visits and monitoring patient health status, AI-powered virtual assistants offer patients personalized experiences and help them identify their ailments based on their symptoms.
- Recipe error detection
Poor electronic health record (EHR) interfaces often cause errors that confuse physicians and lead them to select the wrong medication from drop-down choices or dosage units. However, ML models can use artificial intelligence to analyze EHR data and compare each patient’s new prescriptions. Physicians can assess and correct identified drugs that are not following expected trends. Consider Brigham and Women’s Hospital using AI-powered software to pinpoint and fix prescription problems.
- medication management
People with serious medical conditions, patients who frequently disregard medical advice, and participants in clinical trials may be the most common users. The National Institutes of Health developed the AiCure app to track a patient’s medication usage. AI and a smartphone’s webcam automatically check whether patients are taking their medication and help them manage their illnesses.
- drug research and development
Developing drugs for clinical trials can take more than ten years and cost billions of dollars. The world could change if this process was made faster and more affordable. Amid the recent Ebola virus crisis, an AI-powered tool was deployed to assess existing drugs that could be modified to treat the disease.
- health monitoring
Heart rate and activity levels are tracked by wearable health trackers like those from FitBit, Apple, Garmin, and other companies. You can share this information with doctors (and AI systems) to get additional data points on patient needs and behaviors, and nudge the user to exercise more.
- Health system analysis
In the Netherlands, 97% of medical bills are electronic. A Dutch startup uses AI to filter the data and identify inefficient workflows, medical errors and patients who may have avoided hospitalizations.
- Assistance with administrative workflow
The healthcare sector could save around 18 billion US dollars through AI applications. One application of AI in healthcare is the automation of administrative processes. It ensures medical professionals prioritize important work, so doctors, assistants, and nurses spend less time on routine tasks. The administrative side of healthcare can benefit from technologies such as speech-to-text transcription. They help automate non-patient-related tasks like requesting tests, recommending medications, and creating chart notes. AI in healthcare involves a collaboration between IBM and the Cleveland Clinic. IBM’s Watson analyzes big data to help physicians deliver highly customized and effective care to their patients. In addition, medical professionals can use natural language processing to analyze thousands of medical papers (NLP).
- Offer individual care
Medications and treatment regimens have different effects on different patients. The potential to extend patients’ lives is immense with individualized therapy options. The personalized supply is based on machine learning. As? It can help identify the characteristics that indicate that a patient will respond confidently to a particular course of treatment. It can predict how likely a patient is to respond to a particular treatment. But how does the ML algorithm find out? The system gains this knowledge by comparing the treatments and outcomes of similar patient records. This helps doctors create the best possible treatment plan for the patient.
- Improve gene editing
In addition, genome research uses AI. Machine learning methods are increasingly being integrated into other fields, including genomic annotation and sequencing. It is also used in genome-based diagnostics. Thanks to Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), specifically the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system, significant advances have been made in our ability to precisely and inexpensively modify DNA.
AI-powered technology is revolutionizing healthcare by incorporating more robotic technology and virtual assistance that improves the effectiveness of care delivery. It enables physicians to quickly create effective treatment programs for patients and detect infectious diseases at an early stage. These are just a few options that AI offers to the healthcare sector. There will be additional opportunities for time savings, cost reductions, and accuracy improvements as innovation drives the skills of automation and the digital workforce.
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References:
- https://www.novatiosolutions.com/10-common-applications-artificial-intelligence-healthcare/
- https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/86-healthcare-companies-use-some-form-ai
- https://digitalhealth.folio3.com/blog/example-of-artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare/
- https://imaginovation.net/blog/5-real-world-applications-ai-in-medicine-examples/
- https://www.compunneldigital.com/blog/ai-in-healthcare-top-5-real-world-examples/
Amreen Bawa is a consulting intern at MarktechPost. Alongside her BA Hons in Social Sciences from Panjab University, Chandigarh, she is also an avid learner and writer who has a particular interest in the application and scope of artificial intelligence in different facets of life.
