How AI is revolutionizing healthcare

Artificial intelligence (AI), or intelligence demonstrated by machines, is heavily influencing many industries.

AI applications in healthcare can literally change patients’ lives, improving diagnostics and treatment and helping patients and healthcare providers make informed decisions quickly.

AI in the global healthcare market (the total value of products and services sold) was valued at $2.4 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $31.02 billion in 2025.

Now in the COVID-19 pandemic, AI is being leveraged to identify virus-related misinformation on social media and remove it. AI is also helping scientists expedite vaccine development, track the virus and understand individual and population risk, among other applications.

Companies such as Microsoft, which recently stated it will dedicate $20 million to advance the use of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 research, recognize the need for and extraordinary potential of AI in healthcare.

AI in healthcare

The ultimate goal of AI in healthcare is to improve patient outcomes by revolutionizing treatment techniques. By analyzing complex medical data and drawing conclusions without direct human input, AI technology can help researchers make new discoveries.

Various subtypes of AI are used in healthcare. Natural language processing algorithms give machines the ability to understand and interpret human language. Machine learning algorithms teach computers to find patterns and make predictions based on massive amounts of complex data.

AI is already playing a huge role in healthcare, and its potential future applications are game-changing. We’ve outlined four distinct ways that AI is transforming the healthcare industry.

Four ways AI is transforming healthcare

This transformative technology has the ability to improve diagnostics, advance treatment options, boost patient adherence and engagement, and support administrative and operational efficiency.

1. Improving diagnostics

AI can help healthcare professionals diagnose patients by analyzing symptoms, suggesting personalized treatments and predicting risk. It can also detect abnormal results.

Analyzing symptoms, suggesting personalized treatments and predicting risk

Many healthcare providers and organizations are already using intelligent symptom checkers. This machine learning technology asks patients a series of questions about their symptoms and, based on their answers, informs them of appropriate next steps for seeking care.

Buoy Health offers a web-based, AI-powered health assistant that healthcare organizations are using to triage patients who have symptoms of COVID-19. It offers personalized information and recommendations based on the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Additionally, AI can take precision medicine — healthcare tailored to the individual — to the next level by synthesizing information and drawing conclusions, allowing for more informed and personalized treatment. Deep learning models have the ability to analyze massive amounts of data, including information about a patient’s genetic content, other molecular/cellular analysis and lifestyle factors — and find relevant research that can help doctors select treatments.

AI can also be used to develop algorithms that make individual and population health risk predictions in order to help improve outcomes. At the University of Pennsylvania, …read more

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