Artificial intelligence (AI), is booming in the medical field, Gigaom reports. AI solutions are helping the healthcare realm more efficiently, improving quality of care, and providing advances in the way humans diagnose and treat health conditions.
Gigaom highlights three main areas in healthcare that are seeing benefits from AI solutions:
- Predictive diagnoses – According to Gigaom, AI “allows medical teams to create diagnoses based on large data sets…AI can analyze this data in seconds and observe statistical, as well as causal, relationships in the data set.” Because this data and any applicable correlations can be challenging for humans to identify, AI is able to step in and provide prompt predictions to aid practitioners in their decisions making and strategies while treating a patient.
- Precision medicine – Gigaom says that aside from deciphering prescriptions, AI precision can be used in medical treatments. “AI has the capacity to utilize the patient’s genetic profile to create recommendations that are unique to the person’s code.” These systems can also store and process an infinite amount of data on a patient, including their medical history, medical conditions, case studies and more.
AI involved with precision medicine can also process medical imagery. “Software can identify almost imperceptible characteristics, handle the tremendous amount of data generated by digital scanning technology, and decrease the analysis period from days to minutes.” Solutions like this might play a role in automation and application of medical treatments in the future, as well.
- Process management – Gigaom says that AI will play a huge role in workflows in the healthcare field. “AI technology promises greater treatment capacity, reduced medical liability, labor savings, and improved, customer satisfaction…Busy practices can automate (with supervision) the scheduling, check-in, diagnosis, and follow-up process, as well as obtaining process-refining feedback from patients.”
Saving on personnel costs and avoiding human error are major pluses in adopting AI, Gigaom says. Plus, practices can “reduce the need for doctors and nurses to perform routine tasks, and minimize the time required to perform essential functions.”
What this means for decision makers:
While it may look like the medical field is moving away from the human touch, Gigaom says this isn’t the case. There will still be instances where difficult diagnoses need to be delivered, and difficult decisions need to be made when advising patients on treatment options: “When a device or software has no emotions, the empathy factor is removed.” Plus, Gigaom reports that even though AI driven surgery equipment is being used more, and have provided more accurate procedures, 40 percent of these cases needed human intervention. As a result, AI solutions will more than likely serve as a supplement to human medical professionals, instead of replacing them.
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