How AI-Powered Assistants Are Transforming Healthcare
In a prior look at “AI Driven Healthcare” we examined some of the thrilling and impactful ways in which artificial intelligence is beginning to affect medical practices. We covered things like AI helping with early disease detection and managing simple, repetitive tasks like X-ray and CT scan analysis. We also alluded to the idea that AI’s impact on healthcare is really only just beginning to become apparent.
There are still applications and benefits we are only just starting to recognize — and many of them concern the technology’s ability to act as an “assistant” in numerous capacities.
One example that’s already quite widespread is that of using AI on the administrative side of healthcare to help manage records, inventory, and data. Currently, it may be the most common application of artificial intelligence in the world of medicine. AI assistants accurately and efficiently catalog information in an orderly manner, and ensure record integrity and accessibility at a level that human administrators simply can’t manage.
This technology is also particularly easy for hospitals and health systems to adopt, as it only involves software, not infrastructural changes.
Another AI advancement that is becoming more prevalent is remote patient monitoring, such as wearable devices. A blend of high-end electronic progress and greater connectivity is bringing about new capabilities. New, cutting-edge designs in printed circuit boards and device manufacturing are enabling highly capable wearable and in some cases implantable health monitors. Multi-layered circuitry allows for more connections and complex functions, but in more compact spaces.
The result is smaller but extremely powerful wireless tech products. In healthcare, such products, coupled with improved wireless networks such as 5G, can be used to automatically track patients’ health, monitoring chronic conditions and basic vitals alike.
It is also important to note that AI-powered assistant applications go beyond direct care and patient monitoring. These assistants also have the potential to transform how medical professionals train for real-life situations. Just recently, BBC News looked into “virtual patients” that are being used to role-play life-like medical scenarios in computer programs.
These “patients” are powered by AI, and interact with doctors and students through tablets, computers, and even virtual reality headsets. The AI patients are not purely diagnostic training tools, but rather sophisticated social programs that help professionals practice “soft skills'' like administering PPE, explaining diagnosis, and even building trust.
There are already applications beyond the examples given here, and undoubtedly more on the way as well. Current forms of AI assistants are already improving medical outcomes for patients, while easing the undue burdens placed on clinicians and healthcare administrators. It is our goal at Segmed to enable more AI developers to further improve algorithms, and bring about an equitable future in healthcare sooner rather than later.
