There’s no question as to the famous saying that goes, “Health is Wealth.” Each one of us strives as much as we can to maintain healthy well-being – from proper diet, exercise, and healthy lifestyle. Ideal as it may sound, we are bombarded with different stressors that don’t allow us to fulfill all these health care requirements. In turn, most of us turn to doctors, medicines, and hospitals to regain our health. These hospital visits and consultations increase the demand for medical attention.
However, some areas in medicine and health face a shortage of medical professionals. This shortage can be attributed to different reasons but thanks to automation and constant innovation, we are finally seeing progress in the healthcare industry.
With the help of technology, we are slowly augmenting this growing shortage and thanks to the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare, some processes can be conducted faster by streamlining it. Now, routine procedures can be done by robots, and analysis can be given more accurately in a shorter period.
More and more medical institutions have been adapting AI in their day to day processes. In an analysis released by Accenture, key clinical health applications using AI can give the US healthcare economy up to $150 billion of annual savings by 2026. With this figure, the use of AI in healthcare is expected to grow by more than 40% in the next five years.
How does AI help in the different processes in healthcare?
Here are the Top 10 typical applications of AI in the healthcare industry:
1. Managing Patients’ Medical Records
AI is an information-hungry industry. Information is both its weakness and strength. If accurate information is supplied, AI can do precise analysis.
However, if the information given is lacking or inaccurate, these might also result in a problematic diagnosis and analysis. Thus, the first step that can make AI work is to compile as much information as possible.
With this information at hand, AI can manage the patients’ data to provide easier access during medical check-ups. There will be no need to browse through mountains of files to get the patient’s medical history.
2. Conducting Routine Activities
AI technologies can now conduct simple medical tests, therefore, freeing up time for doctors and nurses. Some activities include analyzing tests, X-Rays, CT Scans, data entry, and more. Two of the fields that can significantly benefit from this are cardiology and Radiology.
3. Faster Identification of Diseases
Aside from giving more convenient to access to patients’ data, AI can also use this information for faster identification of diseases.
4. Analyze Patients’ Risks
AI can also calculate a patient’s medical history along with their environment. By doing so, it will be easier to calculate the risks for the patient so something can be done to prevent it.
5. Virtual Agents
Patient and doctor matching will now be more comfortable with the use of Virtual Agent interactive kiosks. Once patients register, they will be matched to a doctor that suits their needs.
6. Personalized Treatment Plans
Therapy treatments can now be tailor-fitted based on the patient’s needs. Machine learning tools can personalize the treatment plan design.
7. Optimize Hospital Operations
AI can conduct algorithms on the patient’s behavior and disease probabilities to be able to recommend staffing schedules that would be efficient for hospital operations.
8. Digital Consultation
There are now applications where patients can report their symptoms. The app will then recommend action in consideration of the patient’s medical history.
9. Virtual Nurses
Molly, a digital nurse, developed by the start-up Sense.ly, assists by monitoring the patient’s condition in between doctor visits.
10. Wearable Health Trackers
AI can also do health monitoring for wearable health trackers like Fitbit, Apple, Garmin, etc.
These ten typical applications of AI in health care is just the start of its boom in the industry. In the future, it is only seen to become a more intelligent technology that can augment health care needs.