Artificial Intelligence and the future of Medicine
Dominik Bohler
Technische Hochschule Deggendorf
Bachelor Health Informatics- Semester 3
Ylleza Ahmeti
Most of us are aware of the term “Artificial Intelligence". It is a wide field of computer science that mainly focuses on creating certain machines that are capable of accomplishing activities that normally require human intelligence. There are four types of Artificial Intelligence: Reactive Machines, Limited Memory, Theory of Mind, Self-Awareness. Therefore, during the past few years, (AI) and medicine have been linked together in many ways. Artificial intelligence has reached a wide range of industries and one of them is Healthcare. For instance, researchers have been working on artificial intelligence (AI) systems for health care, which have the ability to change disease diagnosis and treatment by ensuring that patients receive the appropriate treatment at the appropriate time. They have also discussed about the most promising applications of (AI) in health care, as well as some of the difficulties to integrating the technology in hospitals and clinics.
Its main focus is improving patient outcomes and also reducing costs. Machine learning is being used by businesses to make better and faster diagnoses than people. IBM Watson is one of the most well-known healthcare technologies. It can understand and react to questions using normal language. To build a hypothesis, the system mines patient data and other available data sources, which it then provides with a confidence grading schema. Other AI uses include deploying online virtual health assistants and chatbots to assist patients and healthcare customers in accessing medical information, making appointments, understanding the billing process, and completing other administrative tasks. Therefore, we want to know about how is AI going to improve the future of medicine. Speaking of that, the ability of artificial intelligence to absorb massive amounts of data, find meaning of visuals, and discover patterns that even the most expert human eye lacks has fuelled hope that the technology may improve medicine. Experts in computer science, medicine, policy, mathematics, ethics, and other fields will need to work together to realize the full potential of this opportunity given to us. Researchers have seen three areas that Artificial Intelligence has a great potential to improve the future of medicine. The first one is in reducing medical errors that lead to misdiagnosis. Based on a recent study that found that human pathology combined with AI was better at finding breast cancers than either alone, especially in reducing false-negative mammograms, which cause many women to wait longer for care. Second, a range of new applications will be available to assist people in self-managing their health throughout their lives, such as smartphone apps that diagnose skin cancers. It is going to be the age of so called ‘Medical Selfie’, researcher said. Take a picture and therefore get a diagnosis. Finally, AI has the potential to “humanize health care” by bringing the doctor closer to the patient. We can reduce or eliminate the monotony of data entry, which causes doctor stress and takes away valuable time with patients. Hence, the most significant contribution to medicine will be restoring humanity to the field.
With the rapid growth of wireless patient monitoring devices and wearables, patient information is already in digital form. Therefore, virtual assistants are already able to access medical information on the internet. As a result, several virtual assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa, which are powered by AI, are supposed to become far more useful than simply calling a cab. Also, Researchers are currently concentrating on applying AI to power virtual assistants in order to improve understanding of medical words and clinical language. This has the potential to not only change how healthcare professionals interact with EHRs, but also to assist patients better understand their anatomy and constitution, become more engaged in the care process, and stick to their medication programs.
AI has gotten a huge boost in recent years, thanks to the tech firms that have been investing extensively in the healthcare innovation. DeepMind Health, which is a Google project, claims to speed up healthcare procedures by processing massive amounts of medical data in seconds. Hence, this would be a very good improvement in healthcare. Also, through patient data obtained during hospital visits, IBM's Watson technology aids in the early detection of heart failure. Related to that,the latter strategy has been used in a number of hospital wards and has proven to be significantly more effective than traditional procedures.
When it comes to diagnosing medical issues, AI is proving to be just as reliable as doctors. On account of that,AI has been developed by researchers at a hospital in Oxford, England, to detect cardiac disease. According to their research, the technology outperformed doctors in predicting cardiovascular problems in 80% of cases. Meanwhile, Harvard Medical School researchers have developed a machine-learning-based microscope that can detect dangerous blood infections with a remarkable 95% accuracy.
When using AI in medicine, there may also be a few disadvantages. For instance, in the medical field, AI has come a long way, in the meantime human monitoring is still required. Surgery robots, for example, work logically rather than empathically. Important behavioural insights that can assist identify or avoid medical issues may be seen by health practitioners. Second, no matter the system, there is always some fraction of missing data gaps. Some information about specific populations and treatment reactions may be missing in the case of prescriptions. This can make it difficult to diagnose and treat individuals who fall within particular demographics. However, in order to account for data shortfalls, AI is always trying to evolve and improve.
Hybrid models, in which professionals are assisted in diagnosis, treatment planning, and risk factor identification but maintain ultimate responsibility for the patient's care, are the strongest potential for AI in healthcare over the next several years. By reducing perceived risk, healthcare providers will be more likely to employ the technology, and measurable benefits in patient outcomes and operational efficiency will begin to be delivered at scale.
To sum up, AI has the capacity to improve healthcare systems without a doubt by improving data accessibility aids healthcare providers in taking the appropriate precautions to avoid sickness. Also, Real-time data can help diagnoses be made more accurately and quickly. Artificial intelligence is being used to eliminate administrative errors and save money. AI is increasingly being used in healthcare, and new limitations and obstacles are being faced and solved. AI still need some human oversight, may ignore social aspects, has data gaps, and is vulnerable to increasingly planned hacks. Despite some of the obstacles and limitations that AI faces, this creative technology has the potential to provide enormous advantages to society.
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