AI in Healthcare: Impact on Radiology, Psychology, and Pharmacology

Written by Nathaniel Walmsley

Are you curious about the application of AI to Healthcare? My focus in this blog is on the application of AI in Healthcare and the ethical considerations that come with it. Read on to find out more!

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The Future of AI in Healthcare

All sectors of healthcare will evolve to adopt the growing technologies of AI, but one sector that will see particularly rapid changes in the very near future is radiology. It is a field which requires the skill to identify a certain disease or condition and, with the risk of misdiagnosis, deep experience in radiology is crucially important.

HOW IS AI APPLIED TO RADIOLOGY TODAY?

AI has been applied to radiology for quite a long time compared to other fields. With the first use of CAD (Computer-aided diagnosis) systems, the possibilities of implementing new AI technology into radiology have been far and wide. CAD, being an initial step into AI, was not time efficient at all, as it was greatly limited by its inability to form new skills autonomously.

However, since the creation of CAD, research into AI has expanded the uses of this technology. Imagen’s OsteoDetect, for example, can diagnose wrist bone fractures by analysing 2D X-ray images. The technology will mark the suspected fracture location before passing on the X-ray to a human radiologist, greatly reducing the time and effort needed to screen for the fracture location.

ETHICAL CONCERNS OF AI IN RADIOLOGY

However, AI in radiology has its fair share of ethical concerns. If there is a misdiagnosis, who will take the blame? The doctor, the technology, or the hospital? Furthermore, there is the constant heated debate if AI will take over the role of radiologists, leaving the role defunct. If AI begins to become even more prominent in the field of radiology, such questions will have to be answered with both moral and legal conditions taken into consideration.

The Future of AI in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The Pharmaceutical industry is another sector which will experience significant change with adoption of AI in healthcare By predicting the protein structure design that matches the chemical environment of the target protein site, technologies using AI offer insight into the effects of certain chemical drugs and their safety considerations. In this way, AI can greatly improve candidate selection processes for clinical trials.

HOW AI IS BEING APPLIED TO PHARMACEUTICALS TODAY

Already, startups such as CytoReason utilize these AI platforms, with the mass amount of growing biological data available as training data. However, this topic brings with it the concern of ‘Black Box AI’, as the workings or ‘thinking process’ behind certain drug discovery systems are impenetrable, and therefore the question of why and how results have been produced is unanswerable.

How would you feel if you did not entirely know why your treatment was chosen? In the future, concerns over deep learning modelling in drug discovery must be addressed.

The Future of AI in Psychology

Psychologists are sometimes in short supply and visiting one about a seemingly minor trouble you are experiencing may feel awkward. Would it not be easier to describe your emotions in the comfort of your own home? Thankfully, chatbots using AI technology have been created in the past few years to aid the public in maintaining a healthy mental state.

Take, for example, Woebot, a downloadable mental health chatbot app, which asks users to describe their mood.

Using natural language processing (NLP), Woebot responds to the patient with strategies and techniques to help fix any problem, from depression to anxiousness. Through daily check-ins, Woebot can monitor the mood of the user and guide the patient away from any stress or other mental and emotional troubles.

ETHICAL CONCERNS OF AI IN PSYCHOLOGY

However, many people dislike the idea of talking to a robot about their mental health, as an app lacks ‘the human touch’ and is limited by its loss of true emotional understanding – a concept that is crucial to treating mental health issues. Therefore, unlike in the example of radiology, psychologists are likely never to be replaced by AI.

Furthermore, there are serious ethical concerns on mental health chatbots, as it is possible that users will share sensitive information with the app. In this case, the question arises of how secure this information will be and whether mental health chatbots should be considered a serious threat to user privacy.

Looking Ahead

In conclusion, healthcare, with the sectors of radiology, drug discovery and mental health as well as many others, will have to adapt to the variety of new technologies of AI that are being produced around the world, and evolve to implement these technologies to save time, effort and maximize efficiency in a professional field where quick responses are key. However, health institutions will have to consider the many ethical questions that arise by using AI in healthcare, including that of whether doctors will be replaced in the future by machine learning models.