Medicine is a dynamic, ever-evolving science devoted to improving patient care. A healthy healthcare ecosystem comprises of hospitals, physicians, nurses, hospital management, other front-line healthcare employees, insurance firms, pathology labs, radiology, pharmacies, pharmaceutical businesses, research, and many other elements.1

Digital technologies continue to transform how patients seek care and how healthcare providers deliver it. To streamline and speed up operations for patients and businesses using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the healthcare sector, improving the patient experience in the modern digital age entails investigating the prospects and capabilities of AI. 2,3

How many of you know how AI is changing how healthcare services are delivered or about the potential long-term effects of AI on the healthcare sector? Do you know all the ways AI can be applied to bring about much-needed world change?

Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence!

Healthcare is steadily adopting AI technologies that are becoming more  common in modern business and daily life. Healthcare providers may benefit from AI in many areas of patient care and administrative processes, allowing them to build on existing solutions and find solutions more quickly. Despite the majority of AI and healthcare technologies being highly relevant to the healthcare industry, hospitals and other healthcare organizations may have very different strategies to implement them.2,4

For the past 50 years, disease detection and treatment have been at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence in healthcare. The healthcare industry is currently setting the bar for the use of AI, and is aware of its benefits and potential, as shown by the rising investments businesses have made in recent years. According to Forbes, the worldwide AI market in the healthcare sector is expected to reach $45.2 billion by 2026.6 According to HealthCare IT News, CIOs are prioritizing investments in AI over the coming five years.16 Along with improving the general patient experience, several businesses in the sector are also saving money due to the deployment of AI technology.3,5,6

How is AI applied to Healthcare?

Let’s look at a few instances that highlight a few of the numerous benefits that AI offers over traditional healthcare methods.7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14

  • Improved Accuracy: AI has the potential to speed up many aspects of this ecosystem while increasing accuracy, precision, and results. AI can frequently prove to be life-saving when a patient needs to be operated on or immediately given medication. AI can quickly assess the patient’s past records and recommend immediate actions when doctors need to review those documents. Additionally, it can help with various tasks related to the healthcare system, including workflow simplification, financial administration, documentation, image analysis, research investigations, and laboratory and clinical diagnosis.
  • Improved Health Assistance: AI can offer more efficient and practical telehealth services. These digital health assistants take advantage of wearable medical IoT devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and voice-enabled AI that can evaluate essential data. They can assist patients with tasks related to their health, such as making doctor appointments, checking symptoms, filling prescriptions, suggesting dietary plans, and offering wellness guidance.
  • Time-saving: AI has reduced the number of tasks that doctors have to perform. This has led to less time-consuming and more effective treatment. AI can deliver test results for MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, and other procedures, which cuts down testing time and provides results rapidly. Patients no longer need to wait weeks for a test result because they can receive it in hours.
  • Diagnostics Support: Some AI techniques used in healthcare include machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. These techniques enable professionals to acquire additional support to effectively diagnose a patient. By handling a large portion of the initial analysis using trained models, AI can help medical personnel diagnose diseases. It also provides a unique value by helping spot irregularities in image data that are too small for the human eye to detect.
  • Robot Process Automation (RPA): According to Business Insider Intelligence, administrative chores account for 30% of healthcare costs.15 A wide variety of healthcare tasks, including managing patient appointment requests, patient registration, evaluating claims and billing integrity complaints, denials and appeals, data capture, coordination of care, provider data management, credentialing, as well as finance and accounting and billing tasks, can be aided by RPA.
  • Wearable Technology: Wearable gadgets, like smartwatches, include embedded sensors that collect and analyze data using an integrated method. This wearable technology is a blessing for humanity because it has many possible uses, including advancements in healthcare and innovation. When used in conjunction with smartphones, wearable technology has exceptional functionality and can record and store health data for an extended period. The following are some essential functions of wearable technology that are included in smartwatches: pedometer, water tracker, sleep monitor, health monitor, etc. Many smartwatches have health monitoring features that allow you to track your heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, SpO2 (known as oxygen saturation), and other parameters. Some wearable technology have applications that can detect irregularities in the user’s sugar or pulse and alert them.

AI can help promote patients’ health and accelerate their recovery by helping doctors, nurses, and patients. By developing more accurate diagnoses, AI can help assist patients in lowering costs for some procedures. As the use of AI in healthcare advances, it can help doctors have more time to focus on patients, rather than spending more time focusing on administrative tasks. As it continues to transform the healthcare sector, the use of AI by healthcare professionals could soon become commonplace within our future.

References:

  1. Healthcare Ecosystem – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/healthcare-ecosystem 
  2. Transforming healthcare with AI: The impact on the workforce and organizations | McKinsey. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/transforming-healthcare-with-ai 
  3. The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare – PMC. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6616181/ 
  4. The role of artificial intelligence in healthcare: a structured literature review | BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making | Full Text. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://bmcmedinformdecismak.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12911-021-01488-9 
  5. How AI And Machine Learning Will Impact The Future Of Healthcare. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/09/14/how-ai-and-machine-learning-will-impact-the-future-of-healthcare/?sh=1fe8c7747e5a 
  6. The Current State Of The Healthcare AI Revolution. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/04/28/the-current-state-of-the-healthcare-ai-revolution/?sh=564ea74f2980 
  7. AI and robotics are transforming healthcare: Why AI and robotics will define New Health: Publications: Healthcare: Industries: PwC. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/healthcare/publications/ai-robotics-new-health/transforming-healthcare.html 
  8. (PDF) Application of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Chances and Challenges. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351576322_Application_of_Artificial_Intelligence_in_Healthcare_Chances_and_Challenges 
  9. Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare | ScienceDirect. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128184387/artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare 
  10. IoT and artificial intelligence implementations for remote healthcare monitoring systems: A survey – ScienceDirect. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319157821001385 
  11. Artificial intelligence in healthcare: past, present and future – PMC. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5829945/ 
  12. Robotic process automation (RPA) in healthcare. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/robotic-process-automation-rpa-healthcare-dirk-alshuth?articleId=6657883864922411008 
  13. (PDF) WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES AND ITS FUTURE APPLICATIONS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275580004_WEARABLE_TECHNOLOGIES_AND_ITS_FUTURE_APPLICATIONS 
  14. Domb, M. (2019). Wearable Devices and their Implementation in Various Domains. Wearable Devices – the Big Wave of Innovation. https://doi.org/10.5772/INTECHOPEN.86066 
  15. How AI And IoT Play An Important Role In Healthcare Today – Ai4. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2022, from https://ai4.io/blog/2021/08/26/how-ai-and-iot-play-an-important-role-in-healthcare-today/
  16. How CIOs are prioritizing AI investments for the next 5 years | Healthcare IT News. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-cios-are-prioritizing-ai-investments-next-5-years 
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