Did you know?
The Global Medical Diagnostics Market is expected to grow by $ 74.58 bn from 2023 to 2027, accelerating at a CAGR of 6.15% during the forecast period. That’s huge.
Even after the increasing burden of chronic diseases, combined with an aging population, changing patient expectations, and shifts in lifestyles putting immense strain on healthcare resources, the transformation in the healthcare industry today is setting the tone for the evolution we will notice in the next decade. Don’t you think?
The advent of advanced tools and technologies and the kind of democratization we are witnessing in the healthcare industry are commendable — especially the massive penetration of AI technology and its transformative implications in the global medical diagnosis industry.
Being a technology accompanied by speculating perspectives around becoming the replacement for medical professionals, AI has potentially evolved to become the second pair of eyes that never sleeps.
In fact, in recent years, the increasing adoption of Artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis and the healthcare industry has proved to facilitate medical practitioners with reliable support by changing the standards of medical care, minimizing the workload pressure, and maximizing efficiency.
Moving forward, in this blog, we will dive deep into the significance of AI in healthcare and understand how AI is revolutionizing medical diagnosis and care pathways. Ready to explore? Let’s Begin!
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What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence was initially conceptualised in the 1950s with the goal of enabling a machine or computer to think and learn like humans.
As per Investopedia, Artificial intelligence (AI) primarily refers to the simulation of human intelligence in programmed machines to think like humans, mimic their actions and exhibit human-like traits such as learning and problem-solving.
What is AI in Healthcare?
AI or Artificial Intelligence in healthcare is an umbrella term that describes the implications of cognitive technologies and machine learning (ML) algorithms in healthcare or medical practices. Simply put, AI in healthcare refers to machines mimicking the medical expert’s abilities of learning, thinking, analyzing medical history, health patterns and making decisions.
An Overview of AI in Healthcare
Artificial intelligence (AI) in the healthcare industry has the potential to substantially improve patients’ lives by enhancing diagnostics and treatment procedures, in addition to helping and supporting healthcare practitioners in making the right decisions for their patients.
AI in healthcare is a rich realm of data, algorithms, analytics, deep learning, neural networks, and insights to equip medical practitioners with better decision-making, diagnosis, disease management, automation, admin, and workflows.
How is AI Transforming the Healthcare Industry?
As read earlier, we have witnessed numerous implications of AI technology in the healthcare industry, from monitoring health with wearables and mobile devices to reduced operational costs, streamlining patient management, and analytical decision-making; there’s a lot that the technology entails for the healthcare sector.
To understand better, here’s a compilation of the top 7 ways how AI is aiding the successful evolution of the healthcare industry:
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- Support in Clinical Decisions
It’s no exaggeration to say that one of the crucial aspects of medical diagnostics is data. Every piece of information or data that concerns a patient is essential for a healthcare professional to offer accurate diagnosis and treatment. But how does AI helps in clinical decision-making?
Well, one of the strongest suits of AI is the ability to seamlessly store and process large sets of data, streamlining knowledge databases and facilitating qualitative examination and recommendation for patients, thus helping medical practitioners with quantitive clinical decision support.
In addition, leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) enables efficient analysis of free text notes in medical records and amplifies the prediction accuracy of patient mortality in critical care.
- Enhanced Primary Care and Health Monitoring
The democratization of technology has made technology accessible to almost everyone globally. Today, most people have easy access to devices outfitted with sensors enabling accurate gathering and analysis of crucial health data.
From mobile phone health-tracking apps to wearables, analysis and interpretation of health-related data have become convenient, and so has primary care. Today people do not have to run to medical facilities to get their heart rate and blood pressure checked; instead have these advanced wearables equipped with sensors offering the most accurate health records and data.
In essence, another way of leveraging AI technology for medical diagnosis.
- Robotic Surgeries
In addition to medical diagnosis, health monitoring, and data analysis, AI technology very recently extended its roots into robotic surgeries, with a firm root in imaging, navigation, and early techniques focusing on feature detection and computer-assisted intervention for pre-operative planning and intra-operative guidance.
Numerous hospitals have already begun leveraging robotics. For instance, robots integrated with mechanical arms, cameras, and required surgical instruments have resulted in lesser complications, lesser pain, and a faster recovery rate.
In addition, since AI machines can develop new surgical methods by scrutinizing and employing analytical data-based decision-making, AI-powered devices majorly reduce the possibility of tremors or any unintended movements during surgeries.
ALso, Read – GAMIFICATION IN HEALTHCARE – WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN 2022
- AI-powered Virtual nursing assistants
An AI-powered virtual assistant is primarily employed to help identify patients’ illnesses based on their health status, previously accumulated data, and symptoms while offering personalized experiences to the patients.
How many times have you googled symptoms to get to know the reason behind the discomfort and instead got bizarre results from your query? Happened multiple times, isn’t it? Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis can often lead to various medical conditions that could have been avoided with proper health assistance.
This is exactly where the significance of AI comes into play. With AI-powered virtual assistants, quick, scalable primary medical care and proper diagnosis has become more accessible. These AI-powered nursing assistants can help you analyze your symptoms, help you get primary emergency care, and also lead you to access the best-suited medical help.
As a technology, these AI-powered nursing assistants can be available 24/7 without fail, effectively help analyze medical conditions based on previous records, eliminate chronic situations from worsening, increase patient engagement, and improve self-management skills.
- Aiding in the accurate diagnosis
When it comes to healthcare, diagnostics and treatment have always been tricky processes. To figure out a treatment or medication, medical experts must rigorously look into the symptoms, health history, data, potential treatments, side effects, and everything to understand an individual’s health condition and proffer an accurate diagnosis.
And this is where leveraging modern technology like AI can help streamline all of these data and analyze, predict and treat the underlying condition at an unprecedented rate. AI can help overcome challenges, process health data and ensure a clear overview of a patient’s health by employing predictive analysis to filter, search, and organize large data sets and provide probability analysis to make quick and informed decisions.
- Streamlining Tasks & Introducing Automation
Another notable benefit of AI in the healthcare industry is how the technology can streamline tedious processes, employing automation and improving overall efficiency and productivity.
Streamlining tedious and meticulous tasks such as appointment scheduling and health record tracking to virtual assistants, employing intelligent radiology technology capable of identifying significant visual markers, and saving hours of intense analysis. All of these result from using modern AI technology in the work processes resulting in overall enhanced accuracy, capabilities, and productivity.
In addition, one significant benefit of AI in healthcare that insurance companies can leverage is the insurance reviewal process. For instance, using AI, companies can flawlessly store, identify and address medical claims, streamline the claims and reimbursement process, save time and improve customer engagement.
- Real-time Access to Data & Information
AI’s next significant impact in healthcare is the ability to access and interpret real-time data & information to help offer the most effective healthcare services.
For example, by leveraging AI technology’s ability to interpret large amounts of data, medical practitioners can analyze historical patient data, provide real-time support, and predict and identify their at-risk patients to expedite decision-making and enhance the overall clinical care facilities.
As a result, generating rapid and realistic outcomes leads to improved customer experience, increased retention rate, and cost savings.
Wrapping It Up!
With all that read, it’s easy to conclude that AI in healthcare has some unparalleled benefits for the medical industry. Right from real-time access to data and information, automation of manual tasks, and accurate decision-making to effective diagnosis, enhanced medical care, and customer engagement.
Though there might be some constraints regarding data security privacy, and the technology would need human surveillance, in the coming years, AI technology will dominate the healthcare industry, and we know it.
Business leaders looking to unlock the potential of AI technology in healthcare have numerous avenues to explore. However, the best choice is to seek out an expert healthcare software development company, unveil the opportunities and start paving your way toward business success.
