AI in Healthcare Technology

It’s difficult to remember a time when technology and computers didn’t exist and played a significant role in our lives. In this day and age, technology has defined our existence. The impact of machine learning and technology is dramatically transforming our lives across many spheres, but importantly, not more than in medicine. It has been said that our intelligence is what makes us human, and AI extends our humanity. It is a symbiosis of human and machine intelligence.

What is AI ?

AI is any use of Algorithm for the purpose of either enabling diagnosis, prognosis or treatment recommendation for patients. Within the purview of AI, it helps us communicate ideas to the general public a lot. It rapidly analyzes vast amount of data, offer clinical tools to diagnose disease, identify the best treatment opinions and predict outcome for patients.

Earlier, researchers used to hand code using programming the style of diagnosis and treatment selection. In the past couple of years something has changed, as can be pointed. There is increased learning of various techniques, like computer science, to use data to itself inform the important patterns.

Like a search for cat pictures on Google, today it is possible, to automatically classify pathology image of tumors. With performance, it is as good and often better than pathologists in the best academic health centers. It is a very exciting time in medicine, where we teach a machine to perform a very narrow and cumbersome task.

AI Assistance in Diagnosis

AI allows us to look for the most undetectable diseases, primarily the genomic error. This augmented intelligence provides the opportunity to do whole genome sequencing of the patients, suffering from undiagnosed ailments. The researchers look at every single gene of the three billion letters in their genome, figure out the difference from a reference human being, and refer the patient to the right expert for analysis.

It enables to analyze even a point mutation in the gene. Once the cause is known, it’s easier for the doctors to carry out further treatment. Thus, curing the most dreadful disease, i.e., genetic disorder.

With AI assistance, it is possible to comb through billions of bases, go through millions of records of what diseases are associated with which mutation. The basic point is that it empowers us to zoom in on to the mutation and treat the patient. Al manifests these potentially revolutionary advances in health and health care.

AI in Pathology

The field of pathology has enormous opportunity in AI. In view of pathologists, AI has a lot of potential to improve patient care. There’s an algorithm that can automatically detect cancer. Thus, it performs, better than an average pathologist, with significant improvement in performance and accuracy.

AI easily perform this tedious, time-consuming task and come up with efficient report. This could save time for the pathologist, so they are free to focus on more high-level intellectual tasks. They are involved in synthesizing diagnostic information rather than looking for the cause on the glass slide.

Prevention of Diseases with AI

Nowadays, particularly in this fluctuating climatic condition, we are very much exposed to the sun-rays. This leads to cause immense damage to our skin, causing the deadly melanoma. Like, finding the cat in a huge pile of images, AI techniques enable us to look at moles or spots on the skin and differentiate it from melanoma. AI provides us with the power to use our phones to take images of those spots and immediately have a diagnosis.

However, it takes time to be seen by a doctor. It makes a difference for, so-called secondary prevention. The primary prevention would be sunblock to prevent the cancer from happening in the first place. Secondary prevention is identification of moles, being malignant should be removed early, before it becomes metastatic. We can decide, in a much acute way, the disease, thus making a new treatment. With AI, we’re going to find the right diagnosis, suitable drug, hence improving the performance of Doctors and Surgeons.

CONCLUSION

AI in healthcare is revolutionizing the healthcare industry by providing a helping hand. Now, we have the tools to make a huge difference to human life. AI can be embedded in all smart devices that will help track our health and give us empowerment as a patient to take care of our own self.

These days we have got a symptom checker app which help patients decide whether they should see a specialist and if so, which one ? The app’s algorithm provides the Dr. with valuable information for taking the patient’s medical history, even in the case of rare diseases.

Thus, it can support the choice of the right treatment. AI systems must be trained with as much data as possible in order to deliver reliable results. At the same time, doctors need additional skills to be able to make better decisions in the interest of patients, supported by AI. In this way, the potential of AI for medicine can be used in a reflective and competent manner.

Fatma Naseem
Pursuing MBBS, GMC Bettiah

2 thoughts on “AI in Healthcare Technology

  1. Artificial Intelligence can do a lot for humankind.Time will tell what a divine technology it is for us. All the best good work.

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