How AI Can Transform Healthcare Businesses and Patient Care?
Learn about AI examples in healthcare, its challenges and risks, and potential future solutions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly transformed healthcare, providing numerous advantages such as better diagnosis, personalized therapy and simplified administration processes. AI is revolutionising healthcare!
AI is rapidly increasing in importance and expected to have a profound effect on healthcare and how doctors interact with patients. A McKinsey report showed AI and robots offer enormous potential to both the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. One estimate suggested AI-assisted efficiency could save US healthcare systems up to $100 billion per year through clinical trials, research or other areas.
AI Examples in Healthcare
AI and patient experience
AI can enhance digital communication between healthcare providers, hospitals, clinics and physicians to support digital patient interactions such as scheduled reminders, tailored health tips and next steps. AI's use in diagnosing health conditions also speeds up and increases accuracy during patient visits resulting in more personalized and faster care - creating an outstanding experience for each individual patient allowing hospitals, clinics and physicians to treat more people daily.
Wellness and safe environment
AI technology is central to creating an infrastructure capable of meeting the care needs of an aging population and taking advantage of our growing understanding of diseases and potential treatments, while simultaneously combatting workforce shortages and burnout among healthcare providers.
Healthcare data management
Information of great value can easily be lost in the maze of trillions of data points. Artificial Intelligence algorithms are as good as their accuracy and completeness. Data quality depends on workflows that foster trust between employees.
AI's ability to process vast volumes of information quickly and connect information in minutes that would otherwise take years to process is revolutionary for healthcare operations and can reduce both administrative costs and time, creating more efficient operations and improved patient experiences.
How AI can help the Healthcare Industry?
Identify serious medical conditions
Wellness wearables have the power to aid in both diagnosis and treatment. A recent report has demonstrated how devices like Apple Watches and FitBits already gather sophisticated data for the detection of serious conditions like hypertension and sleep disorders.
Simplifying Routine Tasks
AI is now being utilized by more health businesses to automate decisions, increase financial and administrative efficiency, automate certain parts of their supply chains or ensure regulatory compliance.
A PWC report, found that repetitive tasks could particularly benefit from AI and machine-learning technologies to replace or supplement human interaction; AI does not forget, tire or get bored by tasks
Lifestyle monitoring
AI-enabled robots and lifestyle management apps provide continuous monitoring for patients without doctors and nurses present. There are various applications that monitor patients in real time using front camera monitoring of smartphones to track behavior of individuals in real-time. AI technology enables facial and medical recognition capabilities which when combined with lifestyle monitoring apps can ensure patients take their medication as prescribed ensuring patient compliance with prescriptions.
Cybersecurity
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved to the point where it can distinguish between hacker activity and normal network traffic. Healthcare is an incredibly sensitive industry; with information being stored and transferred digitally via applications or electronic means such as the internet and applications such as apps for smartphones or other electronic means. AI's promise lies both with unlocking breakthrough medical discoveries but also cyber criminals seeking an easy target; experts also use it to safeguard AI systems which support medical advancements while at the same time provide protection for them using AI systems to detect, neutralize, and defend against cyber-security in healthcare environments.
AI Challenges and Risks
Healthcare organizations should understand some of the primary challenges and risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI). By approaching it with caution and critical thought, you can avoid unfounded optimism, false assurance, and disillusionment.
Bias
Humans by nature are susceptible to cognitive errors caused by knowledge deficits, flawed heuristics and affective influences/situations; such errors have long been recognized in healthcare as leading to medical mistakes and harming patients; when AI technology enters clinical practice it may further exacerbate cognitive errors by creating "automation biased" cognitive errors that impact patient care.
Data security and privacy
As healthcare organizations and providers digitize health information, they face increasing difficulties protecting sensitive and confidential data while adhering to federal and state privacy regulations. Artificial Intelligence poses additional problems due to its dual nature: It requires large quantities of data in various formats but may also pose privacy and cybersecurity threats.
Training and education
AI's advent, anticipated penetration into healthcare settings and sheer scale have created significant educational and training requirements for medical students, not simply related to developing AI systems and programs; rather they require an overhaul in medical education paradigms as a whole.
Conclusion: Potential future solutions
Technology, when adapted in healthcare, shows great promise for its use by healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat patients, identify patterns in large data sets, and improve patient outcomes.
Machine learning algorithms are being developed to analyze medical images and detect diseases as well as predict patient outcomes. Natural language processing can also provide valuable insight from electronic health records for more precise diagnosis and improved care of patients.
AI can revolutionize healthcare by increasing efficiency and cost savings while providing personalized care. However, concerns have been raised regarding its ethical repercussions – including bias and data privacy concerns – which must be addressed so AI is used safely and responsibly in healthcare.