Reinventing the healthcare sector with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have already started making inroads into various industries. Healthcare is emerging as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI revolution. The technology is capable of facilitating easy and secure access to patient medical data, understanding and analysing their conditions. This ultimately helps improve accuracy and efficiency in the diagnosis and modernisation of health care practices.
An example of an elementary implementation of AI is the use of chatbots and virtual assistants that can take care of basic yet tedious tasks like registering medical records, clinical workflows and monitoring lab results – all in an automated and secure process. Another example is applying machine-learning algorithms to patient-generated data to tailor new treatment plans that will eventually help better serve individuals.
AI in healthcare: Opportunities for the world and India
According to an Accenture report published in December 2017, key clinical healthcare AI apps can create $150 billion in annual savings for the United States healthcare economy by 2026. “Growth in the AI health market is expected to reach $6.6 billion by 2021—that’s a compound annual growth rate of 40%,” says the report.
Another report by the CIS India published earlier this year, AI could help add $957 billion to the Indian economy by 2035. “…investment in AI in the Indian healthcare industry appears to be growing. For example, of the $5.5 billion raised by global digital healthcare companies In the July-September 2017 quarter, at least 16 Indian healthcare IT companies received funding,” the report said.
“State governments are also providing support to AI startups – with reports quoting the Karnataka government mobilising 2,000 crore by 2020 towards supporting the same. The Karnataka government also has a Startup Policy and Karnataka Information Technology Venture Capital Fund that can support AI startups,” it added.
A Transparency Market Research (TMR) report published in May 2017 suggests that the global healthcare automation market is growing at a CAGR of 8.8% and will touch $58.98 billion by the end of 2025, up from $28.31 billion in 2016.
One of the biggest advantages of AI is going to be diagnosis. The technology can help industry stakeholders collate the massive health data that is available. It is estimated that more than 80% of the health data is unstructured, making it invisible to current systems, according to a PWC report.
Fortunately, technology firms like IBM and Google have already come up with solutions. Google’s DeepMind Health platform is working with clinics and health institutes across the world to implement Artificial Intelligence.
IBM’s popular AI, Watson, is using cognitive technology to process and analyse the vast data. “Watson can review and store far more medical information – every medical journal, symptom, and case study of treatment and response around the world – exponentially faster than any human. And it doesn’t just store data, it’s capable of finding meaning in it. Unlike humans, its decisions are all evidence-based and free of cognitive biases or overconfidence, enabling rapid analysis and vastly reducing – even eliminating – misdiagnosis,” according to a PWC report.
Conditions like diabetes, cholesterol, fertility issues and cardiac heath are managed by regular monitoring and lifestyle changes. Chronic conditions are the single- largest burden on healthcare systems globally. Connected POC devices help generate a lot of data about the user’s body parameters. This can be combined with lifestyle information like food habits, exercise, etc, by an AI algorithm to help manage the conditions and adjust dosage of medication.
AI assisted robotics can guide the surgeon’s instrument during a procedure, cutting down the time required to do the surgery and reducing complications.
