The cutting-edge technological advancement is at the forefront of enhancing our standard of living and business processes. From household products to industry-specific requirements, Artificial Intelligence has become a known name to assist us in our everyday business and personal life.
With the arrival of innovation in computing, data analytics, and diagnosis, AI is playing a leading role in the medical sector. The medical field is going through a positive impact from Artificial Intelligence with endless opportunities to leverage the technology.
AI is diving more into the pragmatic arena with the advancing technology.
According to the 2016 report by Frost & Sullivan, AI is increasing at a rate of 40% and is expected to reach $6.6 billion by 2021.
This progressive technology is transforming health sectors in varied ways. From drug development to medical diagnosis to clinical research, AI is improving the patient outcomes at reduced costs. Besides, the advent of AI in healthcare promises efficient and effective patient care, affordable treatments, impactful diagnosis and specializations in radiology, chronic diseases, and pathology, among others.
With the ability of AI to store a massive amount of information and data, experts predict that AI can assist physicians in many ways, such as better decision making, chronic disease management, and reducing diagnostic or therapeutic errors. There are areas where AI is already in use and some areas where AI is yet to make its appearance.
AI’s impact and contribution in the medical field is leading the public and private sectors to invest heavily in healthcare and medicine sectors.
The leading researchers and clinical faculty members at the 2018 World Medical Innovation Forum (WMIF) on artificial intelligence presented by Partners Healthcare showcased twelve technologies and areas of the healthcare industry that will enjoy a significant impact from artificial intelligence in the coming decade.
Let’s know and discuss the growing impact of AI in the medical field:
#1 Virtual Health Assistant
Virtual Assistants are personnel that provide professional assistance from a remote area to optimize your work. Virtual Assistants in the Healthcare industry can help patients in various ways.
In today’s time, the Virtual Health Assistants help patients with their medical problems and queries instantly in real-time.
Virtual Health Assistant is helpful for both the physician and the patient. For example, physicians can make use of AI-based virtual assistants to obtain patient’s information from the patient chart, visiting records, medication list, and so forth. Physicians can track and follow with the patient and their medication with easy steps.
Now imagine, you are a patient and you are visiting a website or an app. There you are greeted by a virtual assistant, and they help you reach the destination or result easily. Such is the power of Virtual Health Assistant, which is designed to respond to voice or text feeds in different devices and provides the patient 24/7 access to the information and data.
These assistants also provide medication alerts, appointment reminders, report information to physicians, get answers to the questions asked, and many other queries are answered correctly and effectively. In short, Virtual Health Assistants connects the patient and a doctor quickly, while saving their time and connecting with each other from miles apart.
#2 Healthcare Bots
Chatbots are already in use in different industries like retail and service-based. Healthcare bots are gaining traction in customer service to help patients and customers by answering the questions or queries asked.
Healthcare Bots are for patient engagement, which not only answers health-related questions but also helps patients manage medications by providing information and recommended doses.
The bots also help in scheduling patient meetings or appointments with the physician, incorporate natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and concept mining into a chat script, learn human conversation, and many more.
They can also help patients to request prescription refills and pay bills along with actionable alerts such as appointment reminders, lab test reminders and reports, and next steps.
For example, the Microsoft Healthcare Bot is Software as a Service (SaaS), which enables healthcare organizations to use AI to deliver personalized and intelligent healthcare information naturally and conversationally. It lets the patients have access to appropriate healthcare information as and when they need it.
The healthcare bot service includes built-in medical intelligence with natural language capabilities, extensibility tools and compliance constructs, allowing healthcare organizations to give people access to trusted and relevant healthcare services and information.
#3 Medical Imaging
The use of AI in medical imaging is nothing less than a blessing for the medical field. That is why Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are the new hype in the healthcare sector. AI in medical imaging is one of the most potential areas of health innovation.
AI in medical imaging reduces the procedure time, provides 2D and 3D imaging, and improves diagnosis capabilities making the image analysis more accurate and useful, decreasing the chance for errors.
For example, AI helps radiologists to analyze medical images in concern with the upcoming trends and customize according to the patient’s requirement.
AI in radiology helps in diagnosis by examining medical images like MRIs, X-Rays, CT scans, etc. which cannot be seen through the naked eyes. AI is also utilized to detect cancer, natural language processing to facilitate critical results reporting.
AI is poised to increase the value of radiology in healthcare. AI, with the use of natural language processing and deep learning algorithms, is helping radiologists coordinate and integrate information, prioritize patients for immediate interpretation, standardize reports, and characterize diseases.
#4 Robotic Surgery
Robotic Surgery is not a future technology, but it is an active and effective one. Artificial Intelligence-based Robotic Surgery is growingly assisting microsurgical procedures to help reduce surgeon variations that could affect patient recovery.
The AI robotic surgery can be seen in the field of orthopaedics, urology, general surgery, gynaecology, neurology, rectal and colon, multiple oncology, dental implants, and hair transplants.
Many AI-based robot surgeries let the surgeon perform complex operations with accuracy, control, and flexibility; that is, it helps the doctor to improve skills and perform better. Robot-assisted surgeries result in fewer complications, less pain, and quick recovery time.
For some procedures like eyes, doctors require a steady hand, and an AI robot is the best option. AI uses deep learning data, which is collected by watching the surgeons perform; robots use the data from past operations to implement the surgical techniques.
Deep Learning Evolution – The Real Insight
Using the data, AI can determine patterns through surgical procedures to improve the precision and accuracy of a robot.
AI helps surgeons during a complex surgery by providing real-time data of the movements the surgeon makes during the operation.
Concluding Views
Robotic Surgery is not fully automated for now, but in the future, it will be, with the collection and integration of data into the process.
For now, the robotic surgery platform is ruled by the da Vinci System by Intuitive Surgical. Based on Intuitive internal data, today the robot has performed more than six million surgeries globally.
These different varieties of surgical robots like Mako by Stryker, NAVIO by Smith & Nephew, and so forth are versatile and cost-effective.
The future of robotics surgery is very bright, and in no time it is going to take over the small areas. The robot today provides medical professionals with a workspace to manage surgical content, reduce risk, improve quality, and facilitate data-enabled training. In future robotic surgeons will be more involved in the healthcare requirements of the patients.
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