The spike in telehealth use on the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic garnered a lot consideration, and for good purpose. However one other technological revolution can be gaining traction in healthcare, the place AI hype is giving technique to an ever-increasing variety of real-world functions.
“During the pandemic, all of us have seen an explosion within the adoption of digital well being,” mentioned David Rhew, international chief medical officer and vp of healthcare for Microsoft, Tuesday at MedCity INVEST in Chicago. “However throughout that point, we’ve additionally seen a number of extremely revolutionary approaches in the direction of the usage of synthetic intelligence to enhance decision-making, to permit us to turn out to be rather more predictive and in addition to enhance medical workflows,” mentioned Rhew, in a panel dialogue about AI’s adoption.
Others on the panel—which was moderated by MedCity Information’ editor-in-chief, Arundhati Parmar—concurred.
AI is more and more taking part in a much bigger half in healthcare, and it’s not the stuff of science fiction, the place robots substitute individuals—or extra particularly medical doctors. As an alternative, AI and machine studying are rising right into a extra dynamic, supportive position that helps well being suppliers enhance outcomes for sufferers and reduces workload for medical employees.
“We have now developed AI choice help instruments to assist with diagnosing sufferers with quite a lot of ailments, whether or not it’s liver illness or Covid,” mentioned Rajarshi Banerjee, CEO at Perspectum, which is headquartered in Oxford, England.
It’s not about whether or not AI has a spot in healthcare, however what its capabilities will likely be, the panelists mentioned. “With that in thoughts, we should always configure how we need to use synthetic intelligence slightly than battle in opposition to it,” Banerjee mentioned.
Among the many rising variety of functions for AI in healthcare, is its use in symptom checkers. Specifically, Tom Richards, senior vp and international lead for technique and enterprise improvement at Cigna, famous that his firm had invested in Buoy Well being in 2020. “We labored with them to develop a symptom checker that was Covid-specific,” he mentioned.
The AI-powered symptom checker was rapidly developed and deployed and has been utilized by a whole lot of 1000’s, most who discovered they didn’t want to hunt instant care. “It added large worth,” Richards mentioned. For many who did require medical consideration, they had been triaged to make sure they acquired the fitting care, he added.
Analysis can be underway to see if AI may very well be used to extra successfully and effectively use mammography to display for breast most cancers, defined Dr. Sarah Friedewald, vice chair of operations within the division of radiology and chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medication.
“One of many best criticisms of mammography is the low sensitivity and the nervousness related to having to return again for extra imaging that won’t find yourself being most cancers,” Friedewald mentioned. “That truly prevents sufferers from coming in and getting screened as a result of they don’t need to undergo that nervousness.”
However it isn’t solely direct medical functions the place AI might enhance healthcare. It’s additionally getting used to assist sort out extra mundane, administrative duties to reduce these burdens and depart extra time for face-to-face doctor-patient interplay.
“Taking pointless waste out of the system together with administrative duties that don’t should be carried out or could be carried out extra effectively is certainly an essential use case,” Richards mentioned.
He famous that Cigna makes use of AI to deal with tens of millions of prior authorizations, and that almost all are in a position to be permitted robotically.
No matter AI is likely to be used for as we speak or tomorrow, panelists emphasised the assistive position expertise can play to assist enhance affected person outcomes and scale back the workload for well being suppliers who’re already stretched skinny.
“It reduces a few of the human burden,” Richards mentioned.