Benefits of AI in Healthcare Shared by a New Delhi High School Student

Have you considered the benefits of AI in healthcare? Read on to learn about the impact it’s making in preventative care and early detection.

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How is AI being applied to healthcare today?

AI has several wide-ranging applications, and recently it has found its way into the healthcare industry. The most common and well-known benefit of AI in healthcare is the early detection of diseases. Well-trained machine learning algorithms can detect diseases such as cancer from medical scans, just like doctors do. According to the American Cancer Society, AI is enabling the review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster with 99% accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies. Doctors are also using AI-enhanced microscopes to scan for harmful bacterias in blood samples. The machines can predict harmful bacteria in blood with 95% accuracy and at a faster rate compared to manual scanning. These machine learning algorithms are sometimes even better than doctors as they can process a large amount of data during training. By detecting diseases like cancer at the early stages, AI saves many lives.

Another benefit of AI in healthcare is its use in autonomous robotic surgery. I find this idea particularly interesting and have written a research paper on the same (Check it out here! - https://bit.ly/3ol3gbX). Several existing surgical robots already assist the surgeon during surgery. However, most of these robots are part of the "master-slave" system - they are in complete control of the surgeon. Applying carefully trained machine learning algorithms to these robots could enable them to perform surgery autonomously, under the supervision of a surgeon. This would help mitigate the high demand for more surgeons and doctors in developing countries and reduce the workload on a surgeon. If it is developed correctly, it could also improve the success rate of surgeries and reduce the rate of complications.

Artificial Intelligence has also been applied for the development of new drugs and medicines. In 2007, a robot named Adam scoured billions of data points to predict nine new and accurate hypotheses about the function of genes within yeast. This information was used by Adam's robot friend Eve to discover that triclosan can combat malaria-based parasites. Several biopharmaceutical companies are impeded by large development and research costs. They are beginning to take notice of the efficiency, accuracy and knowledge that AI can provide. Atomwise uses neural networks to help predict bioactivity and identify patient characteristics for clinical trials. Their AI technology can scan between 10-20 million genetic compounds every day, delivering results 100 times faster than traditional pharmaceutical companies.

As you can see, Artificial Intelligence can be applied to several wide-ranging fields, including disease detection, autonomous surgery and drug development. It is truly the future of healthcare and the way forward to a more sustainable and healthy life. Thanks for reading!

Sources - :

1) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/healthcare/publications/ai-robotics-new-health/transforming-healthcare.html

2) https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jhe/2021/9983652/#abstract

3) https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-healthcare

4) https://www.worldwidejournals.com/international-journal-of-scientific-research-(IJSR)/fileview/autonomous-surgery-using-artificial-intelligence_September_2021_2603151220_5701600.pdf