Artificial intelligence has simplified jobs, tasks, and roles across a variety of industries, facilitating human work and increasing productivity by using computers and machines to replicate the way a human mind makes decisions and solves issues. This growing technology has become a huge player in today’s economy, especially in the healthcare industry.

AI in healthcare has grown drastically over the years and provides multiple advantages over traditional methods of analytics and clinical decision-making. During the COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide lockdown, medical and research labs were forced to accelerate their digital capabilities; they needed AI support to better understand the virus and find a drug to treat it quickly. By the third quarter of 2020, healthcare AI funding had reached $2 billion. Along with its substantial growth during the pandemic, AI continues to revolutionize the healthcare industry in a variety ways.

AI & Diagnosis

Erroneous and late diagnoses occur across the industry often, and AI has been used to improve the diagnostic process by predicting and diagnosing diseases faster than medical professionals.

Take the diagnosis of cancer, for example. PathAI develops machine learning technology that assists pathologists for more accurate diagnoses, with the goal of minimizing errors in the diagnosis process to save more lives. Freenome also uses AI in screenings, diagnostic tests, and blood work for cancer diagnosis, with the hopes of detecting cancer in earlier stages. These developers are also hoping to develop new treatments with new techniques.

At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard’s teaching hospital, AI is used to diagnose potentially deadly blood diseases at an early stage. Doctors use AI-enhanced microscopes to check blood samples for harmful substances and bacteria more quickly than manual scanning. These machines learn to identify bacteria in blood and predict their presence by training the AI technology with sample images. With a higher accuracy rate, these machines are saving more lives than ever.

AI & Treatment

Along with proper diagnosis comes effective treatment. AI can be used to identify and target treatment for specific diagnosis and illnesses, as well as for efficient and accurate drug discovery.

BenevolentAI combines AI with Deep Learning to assess the correct treatment to give patients at the right time. Atomwise uses AI to treat serious diseases like Ebola and multiple sclerosis. Their neural network AtomNET identifies patient characteristics and predicts their bioactivity for clinical trials. This technology delivers results 100 times faster than traditional pharmaceutical companies.

BERG, a clinical-stage AI-based biotech platform, maps diseases to speed up the discovery and development of advanced breakthrough medicines and vaccines. They use research and development along with interrogative biology, which allows medical professionals to create specific products and medicine for individuals with rare diseases. Recently, BERG has also developed treatment for Parkinson’s disease, a disease that slowly impairs your balance, coordination, and movement with stiffness and shaking. With the help of AI, BERG was able to connect links between human body chemicals that were not known before.

AI & Assistance

In this industry, every second counts toward saving someone’s life. Therefore, any time that can be spared is crucial. With new innovations in AI healthcare technology, hospitals are able to manage patient flow better and more efficiently.

Hospitals are implementing robotics to help doctors with precision, control, and flexibility when performing tasks, including open-heart surgery. Robots are built with arms, cameras, and surgical instruments that augment doctors’ knowledge, skills, and experience in surgeries. Surgeons can control these robots from the console of a computer and reach a magnified view that their own eyes can’t see. Vicarious Surgical combines virtual reality with AI-enabled robots so surgeons can perform minimally invasive operations and have a more detailed look at a patient’s insides. Auris Health develops robots with micro instrumentation, endoscope design, data science, and AI to improve endoscopies, and Auris Health is working on AI robots that study lung cancer to find a cure.

Surgeries assisted by AI-implemented robots suffer from fewer complications and less pain for patients, and offer a faster recovery rate.

Assistance with basic and redundant tasks can also save doctors and nurses a lot of time so they can take care of more important, high-level tasks. Olive is an AI-based platform that automates repetitive healthcare tasks so that administrators and staff have more free time for vital tasks. The platform seamlessly integrates with the hospital’s existing software. Similarly, Qventus’s AI platform solves operational challenges and prioritizes a patient’s illness and recovery. It helps track things like hospital waiting times and the best ambulance routes.

The Future of Healthcare is AI

AI in healthcare is becoming a standard practice; it is advancing medical treatment, improving patient experiences, and helping save the lives of millions of patients and individuals. As one of the world’s highest-growth industries, it’s expected to reach a market value of $194.4 billion by 2030. AI has demonstrated its value to hospitals, labs, doctors, and patients. AI isn’t just the future; it’s the future of healthcare.

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