Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It can be used in almost any sector, with dozens of use cases. And one of the most exciting sectors AI could have a huge impact on is health care. According to IBM and Deepminds Healthcare, AI has the capability to help in early stages to specify certain diagnose of patients in a very accurate way. Further use cases of AI would be in decision making processes, care delivery, chronic care management and self-care.
Solutions which are already being used are: AI replacing repetitive task. Think about administration of patients, which now still takes a lot of time from doctors and nurses. Having these repetitive tasks reduced gives the doctors more time to focus on what they were meant to be doing in the first place: be doctors.
A second use case, one which needs more development, studying, and especially data and data analysis is AI predictive health care. In this case through the use of Big Data analytics AI can predict in what state a patient is at, and with this data prevent patients in an early stage to develop into more severe cases. With this insight, health care will make a switch from taking care of ill people, to prevent people get severe illnesses in the first place. Preventing people from getting sick, will not only save huge amounts of time and energy, but also save millions in current hospital costs.
A third and final use case I would like to bring up is precision medicine. Through AI and data analysis doctors can use this tool to take better decisions in their evaluation process. Think of someone who has a fracture, more often than not doctors might miss a genuine fracture (false negative) or on the other hand, classify something as a fracture (false positive). Through AI this decision-making process can be automized. Doctors can still give their insights on certain situations. However, if AI gives a completely different analysis than what the doctor expects the doctor here has the advantage to get triggered to pay extra attention to this case.
These are just three of the use cases which can immensely help our health care system. There are dozens of other applications for AI in healthcare. Where do you think AI can contribute the most in our healthcare system and why?
Hi Jan, thank you so much for bringing up the case of AI and healthcare. It’s an interesting one as healthcare normally is a capital-intensive and labor-intensive industry. I agree with you on the use cases of replacing repetitive work and diagnosing predictively, while what do you mean by precision medicine — is that related to medicine or doctors’ judgement?
Meanwhile, as we witness the development of AI + healthcare, I wonder is it possible to entirely rely on AI for some basic and repetitive disease? Doctors can provide specific treatment to each patient with care and kindness, personally, I believe it is still a long for AI to reach the physiological level of healthcare treatment.
I found it interesting that you mentioned different use cases. In particular, the use case of implementing an AI layer for automating administrative actions is sometimes underexposed. This is not only beneficial for the treatment process, but can also increase the attractiveness for the profession.
I also think that, in addition to predictive applications, we will see possibilities with sensors and home applications.