Healthcare AI Technology: New Advances Put Power Back in Patients’ Hands
By Carla West, Deepend
AI-powered healthcare solutions are helping people improve their diets, diagnose symptoms more accurately, and make better drug choices than ever before. At the same time, they are reducing patients’ reliance on inefficient or incomplete data, helping providers make informed decisions backed by sophisticated machine learning algorithms.
But today’s AI-powered software looks nothing like the potential superintelligence Elon Musk publicly fears. While tech policymakers consider the concerns that tomorrow’s AI-powered technologies may one day represent, people are using these tools to improve care for thousands of patients across the globe.
How Artificial Intelligence Helps Healthcare Patients
AI is helping doctors reduce costly human errors, improve medical efficiency, and structure care delivery in new ways. Some of the most exciting developments in the field of medicine are linked directly to advances in AI technology:
1. Viome - Personalized nutrition recommendations
Viome is a healthcare startup that uses an artificially intelligent algorithm to create personalised diet plans based on users’ microbiome samples.
Scientists have discovered surprisingly powerful correlations between microbiome populations and mental health. Until recently, there was no way to quantify or validate the impact of individual bacterial species in the human microbiome – there are simply too many factors at play.
Only a few years ago, doctors were hard-pressed to find data for any microbiome statement beyond, “diversity is good.” Now, startups like Viome are helping to unravel the secrets of the gut-brain axis, with far-reaching applications into conditions as varied as dementia, multiple sclerosis, and even autism.
2. Babylon Health - Accessible and affordable health service
Babylon Health uses a web-based application to deliver on-demand primary care to patients across the world. It uses artificial intelligence in two stages.
First, users interact with a chatbot interface that helps them self-triage by asking and answering questions about their symptoms. Second, the application uses a sophisticated deep learning algorithm to qualify users’ responses and get them the appropriate medical care from the right physician.
This system is far more efficient than a general practitioner’s typical clinical exam, where doctors have to capture patient data, diagnose their ailments, and recommend treatment in a 15-minute time period.
3. Seizure Prediction
Researchers at the University of Louisiana recently made headlines for developing an AI-based system for predicting epileptic seizures using EEG data. The software successfully predicts the occurrence of seizures one hour before they occur with 99.6% accuracy.
This unprecedented level of accuracy is far higher than that of any previous method ever used. In 2010, before researchers had access to advanced machine learning algorithms, the accuracy of the healthcare industry’s most advanced prediction method was just under 44%.
AI is far better at interpreting patterns in chaotic nonlinear data than human beings are. The human brain – like most organs and living organisms – is inherently nonlinear, making the capture and analysis of usable data extremely difficult without AI-powered tools and techniques.
4. Path.ai - Faster, more accurate diagnosis of disease
Path.ai is using artificial intelligence to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis. The organisation uses AI-powered systems to streamline one of medicine’s most crucial processes: histopathology.
Pathologists are specialised doctors who carefully examine tissue samples to identify and qualify diseases. The task is highly visual and demands extreme attention to detail – a single slide may contain a hundred thousand healthy cells and only a handful of cancerous ones.
This makes pathology one of the perfect opportunities to combine artificial intelligence with human wisdom to create positive benefits for patients around the world. Path.ai’s plan will make near-instant, cutting-edge diagnoses available to everyone on the planet.
AI Can Strengthen Healthcare’s Greatest Weaknesses
Artificially intelligent process automation can address some of the healthcare industry’s most challenging obstacles. By diagnosing disease more accurately to helping busy clinicians manage their time more efficiently, AI is helping to keep healthcare providers focused on their prime goal – helping patients.
Many of the healthcare industry’s greatest advances suffer from a lack of user-centricity. Although the tools and techniques exist, streamlined paths to optimise patient engagement are few and far between, often simply due to organisational inefficiency and data siloing.
AI-powered health technology has the potential to increase patient engagement and improve compliance by removing many of the organisational barriers that now stand between patients as technology users and state-of-the-art care. AI is quickly becoming the cornerstone technology for industry-wide advances in human-centred design.
Carla West, Deepend