AI in Healthcare: A Revolutionary Turn
Over the past few years, many questions have arisen concerning the impacts of AI on society today. AI, or artificial intelligence, is the ability of a computer or robot to mimic that of a human. In recent times, AI has driven itself to become quite prominent in many industries and has continued to be worked on for its flaws. But one question still surfaces. Should AI be implemented in our healthcare systems?
Struggles of Healthcare Systems
Many flaws are present in the world's current healthcare systems, yet their many benefits outweigh their negatives. But, when it comes to ensuring quality Medicare, income inequality plays a huge role. Patients who are able to offer more money are usually most available for a higher quality of healthcare. On the other hand, patients unable to afford such care are more prone to come in contact with some of the system's most common issues.
Some of these predicaments include:
Precision of predictions
Recently, many imparities, including STDs, STIS, and various cancer types, have largely risen in commonality. More and more people are affected by such by the day, and the numbers are increasing largely. But, with most of these diseases or illnesses, cures are not an option. For example, HIV/AIDS and cancer have treatments but no cures. With decades or centuries to come before we can generate a cure, scientists have leaned toward the best possible resolution for this point in time. Scientists have learned that being able to predict these illnesses at earlier stages can lead to chances of higher success rates for treatment. But the only problem is such predictions are hard to make by humans. Many more tools would be needed for such predictions to occur.
Accurate interpretations and diagnoses
In current times, when one individual goes to an ultrasound to receive a scan of an area concerning medical attention, results are reviewed by radiologists and then doctors. You may ask, what is the problem of this? Well, as awful as it sounds, human errors are inevitable. In lower-quality hospitals, doctors are unable to spend enough time on each patient. Such problems lead to more and more patients receiving inaccurate predictions. And these errors are truly prominent within diagnoses. Although such an issue may seem minute, these patients are now more prone to its detrimental effects placed upon their mental health. False positives lead to a patient believing their time on Earth is almost over, which leads to the patient losing hope on their lives. False negatives lead to a patient believing they are perfectly healthy, although they are not and may only have a few months left. Both scenarios are extremely horrible and should be ceased as soon as possible.
Personalized treatments for patients
With more and more patients coming in each day, doctors and physicians are unable to spend enough time treating each patient effectively. Although they are able to spend time figuring out a patient's issues, prescribing an effective treatment plan is where the trouble starts to come. Creating an effective treatment plan for each individual patient includes taking into account medical background, history, genetics, lifestyle, and environmental impacts. To create such plans, much time should be spent, time of which doctors cannot afford, especially in this day and time.
AI for the Better Future of Healthcare Systems
Although the above problems are just a few of the many, they are still the most common. But artificial intelligence can turn all the tables for people who would benefit from a solution to these. Allow me to explain.
AI in Precision of Predictions
In order to obtain a future in the healthcare system, many developers have created artificial intelligence applications to help with precise predictions. To achieve such goals, these systems use data sets of common early signs or symptoms other patients had in order to identify such symptoms in others, also showing the high chances of them suffering that illness.
For example, one system may gather data on common symptoms or signs of patients that have been accurately diagnosed with dementia had and implement such processing on humans to identify exact or similar symptoms. Not only will such processes help to save time, but they also create a much more accurate vision of prediction in comparison to a licensed doctor.
But this is not just hypothetical either. In London, many scientists have developed an artificial intelligence-based system to help to predict an early death rate risk due to their specific chronic illnesses. Now, imagine if such technology was implemented all throughout the world. These predictions have the ability to affect millions of lives each year. Millions of lives will now be informed of accurate health predictions, offering them a greater chance at a longer life.
AI in Accuracy of Diagnoses
As stated previously within this blog, the accuracy of diagnoses have become a very prominent issue among the people within the healthcare industry. In fact, if we look at a recent perspective, many studies are finding that when it comes to the accuracy of Covid-19 tests, around 10% of people are given a false result.
False negatives and false positives can pose detrimental effects on each individual's mental health. But, with artificial intelligence, this aspect of healthcare is given another chance. Once again, using more data analysis from data within sets given to it, artificial intelligence is able to form more accurate interpretations and diagnoses of given scans and reports.
The AI system is not only exposed to data of symptoms coming from people who have such diseases, but also those who do not have it. This variety will decrease the chances of biases in the long run. This technology is not only a vision but a technology already implemented and tested. As of now, any artificial intelligence and machine learning models have been created solely based on being able to generate such diagnoses.
Along with the data sets, these systems also rely on diagnosing these patients based on their medical backgrounds. For instance, Arterys, one AI based system, is able to cut down diagnosing time by over 120x the previous amount of time it took. This system has been thoroughly tested multiple times and has proven to be accurate each time.
AI in Personalized Treatments
Another important issue to address within the healthcare sector is the personalization of treatments for each individual patient. The reason such treatment is unavailable in today's form of healthcare is simply due to the fact that many doctors and physicians are unable to spend time of going through a patient's medical history and creating effective treatment plans based on such. But, artificial intelligence based systems would obtain the ability to cut this time down significantly. What would have previously taken over 30 minutes, would now take only 15 seconds. Not to forget mentioning that the AI system will also always take into account this patient's very specific medical history including family history, genetics, former lab tests and results, lifestyle, etc.
Final Thoughts
To summarize, artificial intelligence could possibly be the next revolutionary era for global healthcare systems. AI has the ability to create change, enough change, for the better of the people. AI is able to make the impossible possible. If AI were to be implemented more throughout healthcare systems, millions and millions of people would now be exposed to a greater quality of care. Contrary to what some may say, artificial intelligence cannot and will not take control of us. Yes, it is starting to assist in our decisions, but they are still our decisions, no matter what.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
