How AI is Revolutionizing Health Care
The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care is to improve patient outcomes by revolutionizing treatment techniques. By analyzing complex medical data and drawing conclusions without direct human input, AI technology can help researchers make new discoveries.
Four Ways AI is Transforming Health Care
This transformative technology has the ability to improve diagnostics, advance treatment options, boost patient adherence and engagement and support administrative and operational efficiency.
Improving Diagnostics
AI can help health care professionals diagnose patients by analyzing symptoms, suggesting personalized treatments and predicting risk. It can also detect abnormal results. Additionally, AI can take precision medicine—health care tailored to the individual—to the next level by synthesizing information and drawing conclusions, allowing for more informed and personalized treatment. AI can also be used to develop algorithms that make individual and population health risk predictions in order to help improve outcomes.
Imaging tools can advance the diagnostic process for clinicians. Smartphones and other portable devices may also become powerful diagnostic tools that could benefit the areas of dermatology and ophthalmology. Using smartphones to collect and share images could widen the capabilities of telehealth.
Advancing Treatment
Brain-computer interfaces could help restore the ability to speak and move in patients who have lost these abilities. This technology could also improve the quality of life for patients with ALS, strokes or spinal cord injuries.
There is potential for machine learning algorithms to advance the use of immunotherapy, to which currently only 20% of patients respond. Additionally, clinical decision support systems can help assist health care professionals make better decisions by analyzing past, current and new patient data.
Finally, AI has the potential to expedite drug development by reducing the time and cost for discovery. AI supports data-driven decision making, helping researchers understand what compounds should be further explored.
Boosting Patient Engagement and Adherence
Wearables and personalized medical devices, such as smartwatches and activity trackers, can help patients and clinicians monitor health. They can also contribute to research on population health factors by collecting and analyzing data about individuals. These devices can also be useful in helping patients adhere to treatment recommendations.
AI can be used to create a patient self-service model—an online portal accessible by portable devices—that is more convenient and offers more choice. A self-service model helps providers reduce costs and helps consumers access the care they need in an efficient way.
Supporting Administrative and Operational Workflow
AI can improve administrative and operational workflow in the health care system by automating some of the process. Recording notes and reviewing medical records in electronic health records takes up 34% to 55% of physicians’ time, making it one of the leading causes of lost productivity for physicians.
Clinical documentation tools that use natural language processing can help reduce the time providers spend on documentation time for clinicians and give them more time to focus on delivering top-quality care.
