AI in Healthcare: Applications, Examples & Benefits

Professionals trouble themselves by thinking that AI and Machine Learning systems will take over their jobs in the coming years. Although this technology is substituting humans in a plethora of job roles across industries such as marketing, finance, telecommunication, agriculture and more, it is not reducing job opportunities. In fact, AI is leading to the creation of a range of new job vacancies that did not even exist a few years back. In the field of healthcare, it plays a vital role that you will read about further.

Before reading about Artificial Intelligence applications in healthcare, let’s learn a little about AI.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence shown by machines that can be helpful to perform several tasks using sentiment analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This technology allows machines to learn on their own from past data and the given information, make sense of it, and use this information to do various business tasks. AI is a superset of Machine Learning and Deep Learning, and these technologies have their own sets of responsibilities while equipping machines.

Role of AI in Healthcare

From chronic diseases, like cancer, to radiology, AI is being leveraged to deploy efficient and precise inventions that will help take care of patients suffering from these diseases and hopefully find a cure for them. AI provides several advantages over traditional methods of analytics and making clinical decisions. AI algorithms make the systems more precise as they get the opportunity to understand training data, which furthers helps humans get unprecedented insights into treatment variability, care processes, diagnostics, and patient results.

As per the reports of Acumen Research, the global market of AI in the healthcare industry is expected to rise to US$8 billion by the year 2026.

Now, let’s look at a few of the examples of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare.

1. Accurate Cancer Diagnosis

PathAI offers one of the best Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools in healthcare that allows Pathologists to make accurate diagnoses. PathAI reduces errors during the process of cancer diagnosis and offers a range of new techniques for individual medical treatment. With increased accuracy in the diagnosis of cancer patients, most of them can be looked after or be cured at a stage where it does not turn fatal, saving numerous lives.

2. Early Diagnosis of Fatal Blood Diseases

Artificial Intelligence proves to be of immense help when it comes to diagnosing possibly fatal blood-related diseases at an early stage. With the help of AI-enhanced microscopes, doctors are now able to scan for harmful substances and bacteria in samples of blood, such as Staphylococcus, E. coli, etc., at a much faster rate compared to the speed in manual scanning. Scientists used over 25,000 blood sample images so that the machines could learn how they should find the harmful bacteria. AI allowed the machines to learn to identify these bacteria in the blood and predict their presence in the new samples with an accuracy of 95 percent, reducing fatality by a large margin.

3. Customer Service Chatbots

Chatbots are developed using technologies like NLP, allowing patients to raise their queries regarding appointments, bill payments, and more. Chatbots also communicate with the patients regardong their illnesses and symptoms, which in turn helps in reducing the load on medical professionals.

Further, the chatbots assist in offering the required solutions to the patients, allowing Healthcare experts to focus on other important tasks at hand. This healthcare solution not only engages patients but also gives advanced treatment to them and offers better outcomes.

4. Virtual Health Assistants

Virtual health assistants are responsible for a number of things, including responding to the queries of routine patients via calls and emails, managing medical information of the patients and covering sensitive data, scheduling appointments with doctors, sending follow-ups and clinical appointment reminders to the patients, etc.

This is created by integrating systems with cognitive computing, augmented reality, and body and speech gestures. It is among the most useful AI applications in healthcare that offer a personalized experience to patients in terms of managing their health and getting rid of their queries. It reduces the frequency of visits to the hospitals, benefitting both patients and healthcare experts.

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5. Treatment of Rare Diseases

BERG is an AI-based clinical-stage biotech platform that works on mapping diseases to speed up the finding and creation of advanced breakthrough medicines and vaccines, changing the approach to healthcare. It uses research and development (R&D), along with interrogative biology, that allows medical professionals to create robust products for patients fighting rare diseases.

BERG has also presented its discovery for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. This disease is a disorder in the brain that results in stiffness, shaking, and troubles in carrying out simple tasks like balancing, coordinating, and walking. The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease begins slowly and becomes worse with time, making it one of the worst diseases. BERG uses Artificial Intelligence to tie up the links between human body chemicals that were not known earlier.

This proves that the use of AI is helping the healthcare industry immensely and will continue to do so in the future.

6. Targeted Treatment

With the help of technologies such as Deep Learning and AI, BenevolentAI became capable of providing the correct treatment to the required patients at the right time, resulting in achieving better target selection of patients and offering insights. The company is working on getting its drugs licensed and creating portable medications for rare diseases.

7. Automation of Redundant Healthcare Tasks

Another significant role of Artificial Intelligence and its tools in healthcare is that it automates redundant, time-consuming tasks. This leads administrators to have some spare time to work on other important and necessary tasks. Olive is an AI-based platform that automates several processes such as checking the eligibility of un-adjudicated medical claims, transferring the necessary medical data to the respective medical professionals, and so on. Olive integrates with the existing tools and software of a hospital easily, eradicating the requirement for expensive downtimes and integrations.

8. Management of Medical Records

Healthcare is among the next Big Data frontiers that need to be tamed. Like a needle in a haystack, significant and valuable data may get lost in the huge pile of data, leading to the loss of billions of dollars a year for the industry. Moreover, without being able to connect significant data points, the development of proper diagnosis and new medicines and drugs slows down.

Data Science in healthcare has made several healthcare organizations turn to AI to stop the hemorrhaging of data. AI allows them to break down the data and connect the required data that earlier took years for processing.

9. Reduction of Dosage Errors

Even a single extra dose of a medicine or a drug can have some dire consequences on a patient’s body, which is why it is important that the patient takes the right amount of medicine as prescribed. Otherwise, there may be serious repercussions. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the industry will be able to reduce the margin of probable errors in medication.

10. Robot-assisted Surgery

Robot-assisted surgery has gained a lot of popularity recently. Several hospitals are implementing robotics that assists them in completing tasks that require precision, control, and flexibility. It is used in tasks, including open-heart surgery, exceeding human capabilities.

Robots integrated with mechanical arms, cameras, and required surgical instruments augment the knowledge, skills, and experience of the doctors, creating a new form of surgery. This allows surgeons to sit at the console of a computer and control the robot’s mechanical arms, while the robot offers a magnified, 3-dimensional view of the surgical site that is impossible to look at with their own eyes.

Surgeries that are assisted by AI-implemented robots result in lesser complications, comparatively lesser pain for the patients, and a faster recovery rate.

11. Automated Image Diagnosis

AI applications make it easy to decipher images to conduct analysis. Using Deep Learning technologies and programs, these AI systems equip themselves with algorithms that offer a quicker reading of complex images, including those from CT scans and MRIs. The automated image diagnosis system offers improved performance to doctors, providing better diagnoses of diseases. Moreover, it is a vital tool when it comes to combating the shortage of radiologists and other medical professionals in hospitals. AI has made tremendous progress in medical imaging in the past years.

12. Fraud Detection

While there are several patients searching for effective medical services that save cost, there is also an exponential rise in the rate of fraud cases. This has made most medical organizations and patients suffer huge damage. With the help of AI-based solutions, these fraud attempts have been reduced massively as these tools allow elaborate navigation through the processes and detect fraud.

13. Clinical Trial Participation

In clinical trials, a large amount of data needs to be collected and organized to get the right theory for a particular disease and its treatment. With the help of AI applications, hospitals become capable of facilitating a result-driven approach to the respective clinical trials.

For these trials, AI allows neural networks to predict the bioactivity and characteristics of each patient.

AI platforms have assisted researchers to find the right candidates to test developmental drugs for various diseases and disorders. It is indispensable in these cases to select the right candidates, and due to AI, the healthcare industry has witnessed a statistical rise in the success of clinical trials with increased speed and lesser investment.

14. Development of New Medicines

Coming up with new drugs for clinical trials takes a lot of time and money. The unique benefit of Artificial Intelligence technology allows healthcare professionals to scan pre-existing medicines and use them to redesign medication in a way that allows them to fight against specific diseases. This makes it cheaper to develop new drugs.

15. Improved Healthcare Access

Artificial Intelligence has led to the development of several medical software that offers interactive and customized healthcare services like anytime appointments with doctors. The patients have better and improved access to the hospitals when required, and the AI chatbots help them further. If the issues are minor, then the patients are automatically recommended the respective medication, and if a doctor visit is necessary, then the same is suggested to the patients.

So far, you have learned 15 uses of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare. Now, you will read about some of the pros and cons of this technology in the field of healthcare.

Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

There should be a balance in everything, including in the uses of AI. While there are several benefits of this technology in the field of healthcare, it has some flaws as well. Apart from the benefits, you will now learn the AI challenges in healthcare in the table below.

This blog has introduced you to the various benefits and uses of Artificial Intelligence, which have transformed the healthcare field like most other industries. You must have realized that this technology has made a huge impact in this domain. So, irrespective of the career field you choose, learning skills in AI can only prove to be useful. It is the right time to get an edge in your career and become proficient in AI.