It is no secret that today’s healthcare is not always 100% effective for the sorts of diseases that people get. Many interventions simply mask symptoms without really dealing with the underlying issues.
However, the advent of AI looks set to change all that. While the technology is not perfect, it is often vastly better than any other approach physicians might have available to them.
So, how could AI make healthcare way better?
Enhancing Diagnostics
The most obvious application is to use the technology to enhance diagnostics. IBM built Watson with that concept in mind over ten years ago when the technology was only a fraction of the capability that it is today.
Enhanced diagnostics is hard to achieve in practice. But a lot of companies are now working on it, and many have systems on the test bench that doctors are already trialling in radiology departments.
Personalized Treatment Plans
Another bonus is personalized treatment plans. Again, AI is making this possible because of its ability to parse massive amounts of data and make reliable recommendations.
Previously, doctors did not really know what to do with all their patients’ genetic information and biomarkers. They could make guesses, but they could not use that data to recommend specific drugs or lifestyle interventions.
However, with the rise of AI, all that is changing. Many of these systems really can tie everything together and make global recommendations for specific patients. This approach essentially gets around the problem of the bell curve in medicine, where treatment targets the people in the middle and not those at either extreme.
Better Devices
Another perk is how AI is improving devices. It is getting significantly better at providing them with an intelligence of their own.
With AI improving hearing devices, for example, more people are able to pick up on conversations occurring around them in the room. The technology is able to select the closest voice and amplify that, all while diminishing the volume of the other voices in the room.
Remote Monitoring
Another way AI is helping is in the realm of remote monitoring. Artificial intelligence has the ability to collect ongoing data from patient readouts and use that to inform doctors on what to do next.
For example, you might have a patient sitting at home by themselves with a monitoring device. This device then provides output to a computer where an AI program crunches the numbers and sends information to the doctor’s dashboard. The doctor can then use this to make recommendations for next steps or adjust the treatment plan.
Virtual Healthcare Assistance
Finally, we are seeing AI get into the realm of personal healthcare assistants. Instead of going to an official doctor which costs a lot of money, many patients are simply getting the assistance they need from AI.
These applications exist already, but they do not link with pharmacies for regulatory reasons. AIs cannot make decisions on treatment. However, that is likely to change in the future as systems become more advanced, so who knows what might happen and how much costs could come down.
