Though AI is already a staple of the healthcare industry, it is by no means fully mature.
Take the human body as an example: We've been poking and prodding at it for thousands of years, yet it still presents unknowns and new discoveries.
To some extent, healthcare AI is currently used to automate programming and other related tasks. If the situation is more complicated or unpredictable, regardless of AI or human wisdom, the stuff we don't know about AI prevents us from developing hard-and-fast solutions.
Forbes reports that IDC, an analysis firm, predicts cognitive analytics — supplemented by patient data — will be used by 30 percent of providers by 2018. That statistic hammers home the fact that AI, before long, will command an even bigger presence in all aspects of everyday diagnostics and treatment.
Machine learning holds merit for medicine
Technology is saturating nearly every industry, but the complexity of healthcare has forced it to improve in unique ways to meet the industry's demands. AI, like all technology, should not only simplify life for providers and administrators, but it should also allow for higher-quality patient care.
To that end, utilizing AI will provide a number of benefits to providers and IT administrators, most notably in data management. Initiatives like Google's DeepMind Health, which mines medical data to support research, will help sort and generate huge numbers of records and make them easier to search. It will improve the quality of the data by making data collection more accurate, without introducing the potential for human error.
In addition to collecting and managing data, hospitals can streamline their workloads by automating diagnostic tasks. Rather than rely on multiple pieces of technology, AI can provide a full set of tasks related to specific health conditions through a single scan.
AI processes could also streamline administrators' communication with doctors and patients. By staying engaged, it could observe and track communication and individual responsiveness.
By vastly improving data management and communication, AI can have far-reaching benefits for the entire healthcare community. From research to hospital administration and patient care, AI can potentially reshape the way we approach healthcare.
Where AI will be more effective
In terms of research, AI gives us a new dimension for optimizing (not replacing) manpower on the exploration end. Automated tasks can also reduce the manpower required to process data, diagnose an illness, and determine an appropriate course of treatment.
Here are three areas in which AI's impact on healthcare will be felt in a positive way:
1. Administration: AI will streamline the clerical processes in hospitals and doctor's offices. For example, once a patient walks in, automation could determine the severity or level of urgency required, as well as provide an estimated time frame in which the patient needs to see a doctor.
In doctor's offices and hospitals, machine learning can help providers improve healthcare processes within their own systems. It can shorten the time administrators spend classifying data or rearranging data to compensate for a different system.
Being connected to AI-managed data means the doctor can compare patient symptoms and health history to the latest research to develop a tailored treatment plan.
2. Admittance: AI tools can read body measurements and analyze a patient's health status to guide administrators in determining which departments to admit patients to and how much concern is warranted. Patient risk-scoring could help reduce the number of readmitted patients by ensuring that patients receive the right care the first time around.
3. Efficiency: AI can give administrators a holistic outlook on patients, including their time in the hospital, procedures performed, medications received, and historical information. Beyond that, machine learning can have a hand in researching multiple solutions for a single problem, shortening the route that researchers end up taking.
And during quarterly reviews, C-suite executives can use this information to determine the hospital's efficiency, as well as point out potential health trends that could be more effectively addressed.
For any technology to succeed in healthcare, it must address the current hurdles that administrators and providers face, such as manpower shortages and patient readmittance. As AI becomes a more tangible force in patient healthcare, such hurdles will no longer be a hindrance in providing the highest level of patient care.
MEBO International is the CEO of MEBO International, a California- and Beijing-based intellectual property management company specializing in applied health systems. He also leads Skingenix, which specializes in skin organ regeneration and the research and development of botanical drug products. Kevin is co-founder of the Human Heritage Project.
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