Artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in global healthcare development over the next 5 years.

As AI gears itself to playing a key role in transforming the healthcare sector, there are numerous key technologies that are impacting the way healthcare is delivered. Everyday new technologies are invented and implemented to enable healthcare to achieve its maximum potential. From increasing patient turnaround times to preventing invasive procedures being formed, artificial intelligence is fast becoming a way of life within healthcare.

Due to its many functions, there is no exact definition for artificial intelligence. It can simply be defined as “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems”. This type of machine learning allows computers to pre-determine the processes instead of already having them pre-programmed. Whilst it sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, it is proving to be very successful.

Current use of Artificial Intelligence

Globally there are many new digital initiatives that promote AI’s use. In the United kingdom it has been announced that five new medical technology centres will open that will use AI to speed up diagnostics and clinical trials. The centres will be built in Coventry, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Oxford as part as the government’s new “digital health initiative” and will cost a total of approximately £50m. Considering how far behind the UK is with the likes of the USA in the digital market, this a huge step up in terms of resources and technology within the NHS. They have long fell behind their global counterparts due to the NHS being publicly funded, however, now is the time for them to play a huge role alongside the world leaders and it appears they have the tools to do so.

In the USA there are numerous initiatives using AI. It was estimated the USA’s AI market was valued at $360 million in 2018. Flagler Hospital in Florida are using artifical intelligence to greatly improve the treatment of pneumonia, sepsis and many other high mortality conditions. The programme, called Ayadasi, uses topological data analysis to group patients treated similarly and find relationships between those groups and is expected to have a cost saving effect of $1,356 per patient. This is just one example of how AI is advancing healthcare, not just for patients but also for hospitals, enabling savings for other branches of medicine.

There are numerous other example of how AI will advance healthcare, for example AI robots have successfully completed surgeries such as PRECEYES, a Dutch medical robotics firm.

The procedure involved removing a membrane from the back of the eye and was a huge success. Heartlander, a miniature robot that enters a small incision on the chest to perform mapping and therapy over the surface of the heart, has successfully gone past pre-clinical development. With AI robots able to reduce a patient’s hospital stay by 21% and being comparatively less invasive than normal surgery, further research and development will go into the area and the technologies will only get better. Whilst we won’t ever be able to remove surgeons from the surgery, these techniques will enable them to perform their job with less risk and prevent any complications occurring.

AI also provides huge benefits in regards to image analysis, a time consuming task for healthcare professionals. Through the use of AI, 2D and 3D scans can be analysed and give the result back in half the time it would take for a team of professionals to analyse and interpret. Paige.AI uses novel deep learning algorithms, recurrent neural networks and generative models that are able to learn efficiently from visual and clinical data. Paige is using information from tens of thousands of pathology slides to change the clinical diagnosis and treatment of cancer and can detect things the human eye cannot.

Summary

In the very complex world of healthcare, AI tools can support healthcare professionals to provide faster service, diagnose issues and analyse data to identify trends or genetic information that would predispose someone to a particular disease. When saving minutes can mean saving lives, AI and machine learning can be transformative not only for healthcare but for every single patient.