AI is already helping doctors diagnose diseases and improve patient care. But there is much more it can do.
For instance, generative AI tools are already used to automate software coding processes and reduce paperwork, but they have not yet reached the level of complexity needed for medical diagnosis.
Personalized Treatments
In addition to improving diagnostic processes, personalized treatments can reduce costs through prevention and early detection. For example, a genetic test could identify those at risk of hereditary colorectal cancer and enable preventive screenings to detect the causative mutation.
AI is currently enabling new treatment options for patients. For instance, a study found that genomic analysis of tumors can predict the response to drug therapy. This information may help physicians choose the most effective drug for each patient.
The development of broad AI systems is a key step in this trend. These “foundation” models, trained on large sets of unlabeled data and fine-tuned for multiple applications, are supplanting narrow AI tools that execute specific tasks. They are the technology behind many recent success stories—including Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, IBM Watson’s victory on Jeopardy, and Google DeepMind’s defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol. They are also making it possible to integrate and analyze diverse datasets and provide smarter decision-making tools for all enterprises.
Predictive Diagnosis
Artificial intelligence can help with predictive diagnosis by analyzing patient data and determining which symptoms could be related to an underlying disease. This allows doctors to treat patients more quickly and accurately. This is especially useful for conditions like developmental dysplasia of the hip, which has a worse prognosis when not caught early.
AI can also be used to analyze a patient’s history of medications and health conditions, as well as their lifestyle choices, to better understand their overall health. This information can then be used to recommend more effective medication paths and dosages.
However, it is crucial that human involvement remains key for responsible and successful implementation of AI in healthcare. This is essential to avoid biased and erroneous outcomes, maintain data quality and privacy, and ensure that AI-based tools are effective in clinical practice. Furthermore, education on AI and its associated risks is vital for building trust in the technology and encouraging medical professionals to use it.
Early Diagnosis
Artificial intelligence can help with the diagnosis of diseases and other health conditions. It can help doctors find potential causes of a patient’s symptoms, predict their progression or recovery and even recommend treatment options. This can help reduce patient wait times for a medical appointment.
AI can also be used to monitor a patient’s condition or adherence to medication. This can be done using an app or a wearable device that tracks patient data. It can also alert doctors to changes in a patient’s status that may require immediate attention.
AI can also be used to identify drug-drug interactions. This is accomplished by analyzing large datasets of patient data and identifying patterns that indicate the possibility of adverse reactions. This can lead to a reduction in drug side effects and improve the efficacy of a patient’s treatment regimen.
Preventive Diagnosis
One of the benefits that AI brings to healthcare is the ability to analyze large data sets to help with medical and other decision-making. These AI solutions can make it easier for humans to track the spread of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19 and tuberculosis, so that they can be treated quickly.
Using natural language processing, a combination of different medical notes and recordings from various devices, and a database that contains disease-relevant keywords, AI helps practitioners find the best diagnosis for patients faster. This saves time for both the patient and hospital, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
While many fear that AI will eventually replace human physicians in clinical settings, recent research has shown that this technology can greatly benefit and enhance the work of healthcare clinicians. As long as these technologies are carefully calibrated to consider the needs of both the patient and the clinician, it’s possible to implement them responsibly [65]. These AI applications can be used for everything from identifying potential risk factors in patients who are at risk of stroke to reducing errors in how patients self-administer medication.