Artificial Intelligence can change the world of the healthcare field. It is working to improve and make work more efficient in the healthcare field in a lot of different ways, and as more advances in this kind of technology become more common, we will likely see it even more than before. This is good news for those who are looking to get into the healthcare field or those who want to ensure that their quality of life keeps going up in the process as well.
There are a lot of ways that Artificial Intelligence can help out with various parts of the medical world, even if we may not realize it right now. Being on the outside, looking in, it may seem like we are not seeing much of this. But often, a lot of the procedures and results you get from the doctor will be given thanks to some of the AI technology.
Let us take a look at some of the ways that AI has already made an influence on the healthcare field!
Analyzing Images
Right now, many of the providers you visit see many different images at a time. The provider has to stop throughout their day and look at images of the brain, X-rays of all kinds, ultrasounds, and so much more to help them see what is wrong with their patient. And each patient may need this kind of imaging done, though it is not as likely that everyone will need this. But if the doctor has 50 patients, and half of them need some kind of imaging done during that visit, then the doctor has a lot of information to look over and make a diagnosis from.
But, maybe, it does not need to be this way. It is possible that with the help of AI, the provider would be able to work with a machine to help look over the images and come out with a good diagnosis in just a few minutes, and sometimes faster, rather than the provider having to do all of the work themselves and possibly making mistakes along the way. This is exactly what a team at MIT is working on. They have been able to work with a machine learning algorithm that can look at scans and then give an analysis in a much faster and more efficient way than the provider can do on their own.
Of course, this process is not meant to replace what the doctor can do, but it is there to help make the doctor more efficient. Rather than spending 15 minutes on 25 patients, these images can be done and analyzed in just a matter of minutes, and the doctor can spend more time with their patients and on other things rather than just trying to take a look at the images all of the time.
In addition to this, it is also the hope that AI can help to improve some of the newer radiology tools that will be released, ones that will be able to help with diagnoses without needing to rely on samples of tissue all of the time. These AI image analyses would be able to be useful in more remote areas, the ones that may not be able to reach as many medical devices or have the same kinds of doctors that those in larger areas would as well.
The most exciting part is that it can make healthcare more available to everyone. Telemedicine, when it is used properly with AI systems, will become more effective because patients–no matter where they are located–will be able to use the camera on their phone to send in pictures of things like cuts, rashes, bruises, and more so they can determine if care is needed, freeing up the resources of the hospital and saving time for minor things and do not need to be seen by a doctor.
Surgery Assisted by AI
Another healthcare industry benefit is the use of AI to assist with some kinds of surgery. With a value that is estimated to be somewhere near $ 40 billion in the healthcare industry, robots can take some of the available data from healthcare records and use this information to guide the instrument that the surgeon is using at the time. This can help to make the surgery more effective, reduce the amount of time the patient stays in the hospital up to 21%, and so much more.
While this may seem a little bit scary to have a computer work on your surgery, it has quite a few benefits. First, it is not as invasive as some of the other surgery types out there, and this helps to keep the scar smaller and improves the healing time. At the same time, the robot can gather up data on other operations similar in the past, and then will tell the surgeon about any new surgical technique that they could use as well. The results at this time may still be newer, but they are positive and promising.
In one study, a tally of 379 was picked for orthopedic patients. It was found that when they underwent an AI-assisted procedure, they had fewer complications going to five times lower as compared to those who just had the surgeon do the operation on their own. In another study for the first time, there was choosing of a robot to do eye surgery, and the best-developed robot for surgical purposes, the Da Vinci, which allows the doctor to go through procedures that are pretty complex with high levels of control compared to some of the approaches that are used on regularly.
Another example of how these AI-assisted surgery robots can help is in the case of Heartlander, a tiny robot used to help out heart surgeons. This little robot can enter into a smaller incision than the surgeon puts into the chest to undertake both mapping and some therapy measures on the hearts surface. This helps to make heart surgery less invasive, more efficient and makes the patient heal and get better in no time.
Virtual Nursing Assistants
AI can also be used in the hospital to work with virtual nursing assistants. Starting from being able to interact positively with the patients who come into directing the patient on where to go, you will find that these nursing assistants can be effective and could ensure the healthcare industry saves at least $ 29 billion a year while helping to fill in some of the gaps that show up in this industry.
Since these kinds of nurses are present every day and all day long, this can make things easier for the patient as well. They can be there to answer any questions that come up, monitor how the patient is doing at different times, and even provide some quick answers without having to bring in a person to handle it. These can make them a lot more effective than what their human counterparts can be sometimes and will be helpful especially with hospital and clinic shifts that are short on staff.
Administrative Tasks
This kind of AI comes in use when you are working with the healthcare field and how the administrative part of this business will be able to interact with their customers. These types of machines would be set up to help all of the health care providers there, whether they are nurses, doctors or someone else, save more time to get their tasks done on a day-to-day basis as well, freeing them up to take care of the patients better, and ensuring that everyone gets their job done on time.
Technology, including transcriptions that go from voice conversion to text, could make it easier to order the tests that a patient needs, prescribe the right medications, and even write out the notes for charts for the doctor. When the doctor can get these things done more efficiently, without having to sit down and do them on their own or having to hire someone to follow them around to do it, then it saves a lot of time and money and makes for happier patients.
One example using the AI tools to help support administrative tasks is the known partnership that happened between IBM and Cleveland Clinic. This Clinic is currently working with Watson from IBM to undertake big data mining and to ensure that physicians can provide treatment experiences to their patients that are more efficient and personalized in the process.
One of the methods that the Watson program can support physicians is that it can take in a larger number of medical papers running into thousands with the help of NLP (natural language processing) and uses this information to help make treatment plans that are backed by research and are more informed than before.
As you can see, AI technology is can help the healthcare field out and can ensure that it will be as efficient as possible in many different ways. And we were just able to touch base on a few of the options! There is so much that is already being seen with AI in the healthcare field, and as more of this is developed, this is likely to become some of the norms as we move into the future.
