Artificial intelligence is transforming the healthcare industry and the future of healthcare technology. Let's take a look at how to harness the power of AI to transform healthcare.
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| Artificial intelligence in Healthcare |
Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence for Transforming Healthcare
Introduction
Digital technologies have had a revolutionary impact on the healthcare industry from 1990 onwards. Although these newer technologies at first look complex and a costly affair to implement, they do certainly provide mainstream support to society as a whole! These technologies, sooner or later, add significant value to people’s health proving to be beneficial for the healthcare industry.
Digital transformation in healthcare is a building block of a patient-centered approach to the medical industry. It can help build loyalty and trust, deliver a better user experience, simplify processes and understand what a patient needs.
Look at the importance of artificial intelligence in Healthcare and the power of digital transformation, digital tools, and technologies and how they are increasingly connecting to the roots of people’s health improving their lives in turn. While managing healthy habits, eHealth technologies like mobile health or mHealth, IoT led wearable devices, AI-ML-enabled telehealth, telemedicine, Robotics are helping healthcare a great deal.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) along with ML (Machine-Learning) techniques, Robotics, and varied other sophisticated digital tools, AI and Robotics are transforming the future of health and the entire healthcare industry. The pandemic has only triggered the power of technology towards harnessing AI, accelerating ML (Machine Learning ) models, Predictive Analytics, and others for diagnostics purposes as well as drug research and clinical research & development. AI-driven innovations, data, analytics all together are transforming healthcare to the advanced level.
Welcoming AI In Healthcare
Artificial intelligence use in healthcare is growing fast. The healthcare industry is changing its landscape so frequently thanks to the AI-enabled digital tools and technological advancements on a global platter.
The industry is adopting best practices welcoming AI-backed tools, analytics, telemedicine, and varied other technologies like Virtual Reality(VR), AI-ML-Robotics, 3D printing, etc. These all technological advancements are allowing healthcare providers with improved patient care outcomes, and AI-backed telemedicine is connecting patient-doctor seamlessly allowing remote patient care, diagnosis, and value-based treatment. Thus, the following points are worth noting about the benefits of AI in hospitals:
- Unburdening physicians, caregivers
- Optimizing data merges
- Cost-saving & time saving
- Better informed documentation
- Proactive & quality care
And there are other benefits that healthcare providers are utilizing by adopting AI in their ecosystem:
- AI is assisting healthcare practitioners, doctors, nurses with routine screenings, procedures such as precision medicine, cardiac care, and varied types of proactive care.
- AI is increasingly delivering enhanced patient care via customized treatment plans as well as varied sophisticated medication management digital tools.
- AI helps data managers, researchers in clinical trials drug development.
- It was in October 2018 when FDA had approved the first AI-powered diagnosis of images.
- AI-ML models, advanced analytics, helping healthcare in solving health issues such as opioid crisis, heart, brain, and varied sorts of illness. The technology brings transparency in the whole affairs.
- AI drives towards high-level use of personal genomic data of patients.
- AI-enabled predictive analytics helps to predict cancer before it develops, or in an early stage.
- Conversational AI, virtual chatbots help healthcare payers to personalize health plans and solutions.
Thus, AI is supporting varied stakeholders in the healthcare segment. As per Statista report, the AI market is projected to generate a massive 6.16 billion USD revenue in 2022!
How AI is Helping Healthcare?
There are several medical applications of artificial intelligence. Many innovative companies use AI technology in healthcare services this time.
AI has the ability to analyze big data sets, better understand the day-to-day patterns and needs of the patient, minimize time spent on routine, administrative tasks.
The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare includes the following:
Medical Image Analysis
AI (Artificial Intelligence) supports clinicians, radiologists, and other healthcare providers in advanced, digital scanning & reviewing of images.
The technology enables cardiologists, radiologists in establishing a precise diagnosis, identify significant/urgent insights that need priorities(as the cases are critical in nature), and leverage EHRs(Electronic Health Records). Thus, AI is used for case triage supporting stakeholders for smooth and precise healthcare practices.
AI-ML algorithms analyze huge data sets at an incredibly high speed, do accurate comparisons, analyze to derive patterns, insights. These AI outcomes help medical imaging professionals to track and identify crucial information on time helping them in the decision-making process.
For example, AI-enabled patient synopsis in the case of Hardin Memorial Health and IBM collaboration, helped radiologists deal with patients (around 70,000 patients per year)for designing customized and accurate reports required for diagnostic processes.
Cost-Reduction to Develop Medicines
AI-powered supercomputers, advanced analytics, predictive analytics, data analytics services all help the healthcare fraternity to deal with an exponential volume of data at a very high speed and facilitate a huge cost reduction in the process. These analytics predict and inform about the relevancy of data, for instance, from databases of molecular structures, they can predict which potential medicines/drugs might click and be effective and which ones might not for specific diseases.
Convolutional Neural Networks are used to identify specific, safe, and effective drug candidates from the numerous databases identified/ searched. This process leads to a huge cost reduction towards developing medicines and drugs in the medical field.
Analysis of Unstructured Data
Clinicians, most of the time, struggle to stay relevant and updated regarding developments in the medical field. Huge volumes of health data, medical records, etc. need appropriate care and handling/managing becomes challenging. This leads to affecting patient care and the other treatment processes.
Machine learning technology is helping here, too, to meet these challenges smartly deploying the latest digital tools and methodologies. AI-ML technologies are helping for an enhanced curation, scanning of these data like EHRs and biomedical data.
Clinicians, medical professionals are greatly harnessing the power of AI to stay informed accurately and on a timely basis. For instance, in several cases, medical records, patients' health data are stored in the form of unstructured data, which becomes complicated for accurate interpretation and access.
Artificial Intelligence seeks and collects these unstructured data and stores them in a standardized version that can be seamlessly used assisting stakeholders like clinicians, related healthcare providers, patients, etc.
Important thing is that AI allows for strict access authorization, which means, only authorized access is possible. Security and safety of data that is crucial and sensitive in nature are purely guaranteed in the process.
AI for Emergency Care
What happens during an emergency if suddenly your loved one falls sick, has a heart attack, strokes?
You’d dial an emergency number for the ambulance and immediate medical help. In this scenario, between the time you dial 911 for emergency care and an ambulance arrives, the patient’s condition stays very critical. Thus, AI helps to detect and recognize the symptoms of a heart attack. cardiac arrest, and then take appropriate treatment and measures that might resurrect the very patient for a while.
AI helps in giving first-aid by analyzing verbal/non-verbal symptoms/clues and facilitating remote patient care and treatment using the telemedicine facility.
AI-ML technologies support emergency healthcare and medical teams allowing the emergency medical team to use automatic defibrillators equipped with drones in situations like sudden cardiac arrest. Even CPR-trained volunteers are laced with the power of AI-ML technology.
Cancer treatment & Radiation Therapy
In certain cases, radiation therapy during cancer treatment lacks the required digital database for collecting, organizing EHRs, and that makes the process difficult to carry out effectively. Thus, AI forays here and provides adequate assistance to clinicians, cancer treatment teams for making an effective decision related to radiation therapy for the concerned cancer patients.
AI helps to create a platform that collects and evaluates relevant medical records, patients’ data to provide quality healthcare services. It helps to optimize treatments facilitating the best oncology outcomes, data, imaging, and so on. How does it work?
AI allows to generate automatic clinical notes and then integrate them with EHRs. This facilitates time-saving opportunities for clinicians and allows for efficient management of patient records, documents, etc.
Forecasting Kidney Disease
AI empowers the healthcare sector to provide efficient patient care in varied chronic illnesses and health issues. For patients suffering from kidney problems, AI helps to deliver the best healthcare benefit.
For example, AKI (Acute Kidney Injury) is a very critical illness that cannot be detected and handled normally without AI help. Specialists, clinicians harness the power of AI to detect AKU and create treatment plans accordingly.
AI-ML predictive analytics predict the AKu in patients that allow for early diagnosis and treatment thus saving patients' lives.
Conclusion
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is helping the healthcare industry on a greater scale. A huge volume of data is generated every second in healthcare facilities and beyond, AI and ML manage them accurately and efficiently helping stakeholders to deliver quality healthcare services.
AI allows for smooth operations and improved workflows, assists healthcare staff and medical teams in conducting repetitive tasks efficiently, and in seconds.
AI is increasingly supporting innovative treatments as well as therapies that benefit patients and medical practitioners diligently.
Overall, AI is transforming the healthcare industry in 360 degrees, simultaneously facilitating healthcare companies to leverage the technology for the best returns in business.
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