Eight medical fields which AI will revolutionize (Part 2)
Previously we discussed four functions in the medical field which AI will revolutionize. They were: logistics, data management, diagnosis and repetitive tasks. For more information, check our previously published blog. The next part will discuss the rest of the medical field areas in which AI will revolutionize in the very near future, some of which had already begun to be applied and used, but with time, those applications and methods will do so much more.
5. Online consultation
There’s a patient remote consulting service based in the United Kingdom which offers consultation to patients when they input their symptoms. It is based on medical history and medical knowledge that is common. The application takes the input symptoms and runs them through a database of most common diseases using speech recognition. The application also considers the history of the patient as well as their circumstances. After that, the application gives a suggested course of action. This service gained quite a momentum since the Covid-19 pandemic started and is expected to grow much wider in the future.
6. Precision medicine
Genetics and genomics will be significantly changed by AI. Deep Genomics has an important aim, which is to be able to identify patterns in massive data sets that consists of genetic information and history of medical records, as it looks for both genetic mutations and their links to diseases. These new inventions will be a whole new generation of technology, in which a computer can detect and inform doctors what changes in a cell when the DNA is altered by genetic variations. It can identify changes in both scenarios, whether the change was due to natural or therapeutic. As AI is only tool that has this capability to hold such huge amount of data and gives insights, allowing doctors to create personalized solutions and treatment, and in the future, the machine will be able to do so on its own.
7. Creation of Drugs
Creating a new drugs takes more than ten years and costs billions. As all new pharmaceuticals go through clinical trials. With medicine, time is always not on our side, as sometimes by the time we are able to get a new drug, the disease has mutated or changed, like the Corona virus. Therefore, using AI is the best solution, as it will speed up this procedure drastically and will also cut the costs to become much less. Back in 2015, during Ebola epidemic, one company used its AI algorithms to identify two drugs with potential to reduce Ebola infections. This was done in less than a day! Imagine how much time this normally would take?! Al algorithms should be our new go-to when developing new drugs or cures.
8. Analysis of healthcare systems
Currently in the Netherlands, 97 percent of their healthcare invoices stored digitally. These invoices have information about the patient, the doctor, the hospital and of course the treatment. These records being of a digital nature, makes them incredibly easy to be retrieved from any facility. A local company in the Netherlands uses mining data as to be able to determine if a clinic, hospital or doctor repeats a certain mistake when treating certain cases or diseases, this way they can detect the mistake and enhance their systems by avoiding the repetition of their mistakes and their overall systems.
Artificial intelligence can be applied and improved in all these functions and much more, with time, it certainly will take over.