Having made significant inroads into almost every professional field, AI has been expected to become a valuable asset to the health industry in the coming years. Though its growth and progress in the field has been hampered by serious concerns involving safety, and the need to protect patients privacy, its implementation is seen to be the next big step in healthcare.
- Early Detection Algorithms
AI technology has been developed to aid in early detection of potentially fatal conditions. Israeli company, Zebra Medical Vision uses AI to identify women who have tell-tale signs of the bone disease, osteoporosis. The program combs through a patient’s X-rays in order to detect small fractures in the spine’s vertebrae that may have gone unnoticed but are characteristic of the disease.
- Depression Aids
Developments with Harvard affiliated, McLean Hospital have demonstrated AI technology to be effective in identifying patients at high risk of major depression, as well as being able to predict effective methods of treatment
- Stroke Therapy
Stroke patients too, may soon find AI technology to be a valuable asset. Toronto based, BIONIK Laboratories have developed methods for stroke recovery. Digital algorithms is meant to detect movements which patients find to be difficult, and devises movements that the robotic arm then helps them practice. The technology could prove to greatly accelerate stroke recovery.
- Drug Safety and Interactions
SuppAI is a free algorithm that doctors may use when testing drug safety and compatibility with a patient’s lifestyle. The program can identify interactions between various combinations of drugs and nutritional supplements. It achieves this as the tool was built on top of Semantic Scholar, an AI-based search engine that includes 175 million scientific papers.
- Primary Care
Multiple organizations are also working on direct to patient solutions give advice via a voice or chat-based interaction. This will provide quick access for basic questions and medical issues, and could help avoid unnecessary trips to the GP, reducing rising demand and burden on primary healthcare providers. These solutions however, still need substantial independent validation to prove patient safety.
Do let us know your thoughts about more trends about AI in medicine in the comments section.
