AI is revolutionizing our increasingly connected world, especially when adopting AI in healthcare. And it is only the beginning of the AI era — from 2015 to 2019, the number of companies that adopted the technology tripled.
The increasing willingness of people to share their data and hence, the growing volumes of data available for AI-powered analysis facilitate the growth of AI across all sectors. Medical technology innovations, in particular, are directly affecting humankind’s future and have been transforming our approach to providing healthcare services.
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What are the Specifics of AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer science branch focused on building machines that operate on specifically developed software, which enables them to perform tasks requiring human intelligence but with no human interaction.
AI is a vast field and features many types of technologies — here is a breakdown of them:
- Machine learning (ML) implies applying maths, physics, and neural networks to identify relevant information;
- Deep learning identifies patterns in large datasets using neural networks;
- Natural language processing (NLP) implies processing, analyzing, and understanding speech and languages, as well as creating ones to enable human-computer verbal communication;
- Speech recognition turns verbal language into data that computers can process and interact with;
- Computer vision identifies things in visual media like photos and videos via deep learning and pattern recognition, eventually learning to locate itself in a physical environment.
Each of these brings us next-level capabilities to enhance how we approach various processes across all industries. And especially, all the listed branching technologies enable AI in healthcare, eventually completely revolutionizing the healthcare sector.
AI in Healthcare: Market Overview
Healthcare is the industry where AI adoption is a growing direction — the value of the AI-driven software market in medical care providers has grown from $663.8M in 2016 to $11.06B in 2021 and is expected to face a more than 1,500% increase by 2030.
And it is no wonder that the market is gaining so much investment. Because AI in healthcare performs various forms of data collection and analysis, AI and machine learning are extremely helpful in providing valuable insights into patients’ conditions. It also allows for giving service quicker because of automation.
In addition, AI in healthcare serves as a second opinion for doctors in pre-screening and diagnosing and assisting technology in various procedures and training in both on- and off-clinic settings, such as for remote and at-home care.
5 Revolutionary Apps of AI in Healthcare
While various AI in healthcare are already adopted and functioning, here are the most recent trends transforming the industry with AI.
1. Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An electronic health record is a set of entries on a patient’s medical history, treatment, and other data on the patient and the healthcare services they have received. While health records used to be kept on paper, they are now preferably electronic and integrated into a more extensive database.
That, in turn, provides both convenience and rich opportunities for AI algorithms and machine learning in healthcare to be applied to work with the data in EHRs. Usually, EHRs hold information as just the notes that a doctor or other healthcare personnel fills in, so the data is initially unstructured.
However, because there are standards for electronic records, like the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) protocol, NLP can recognize the data in the EHR and exchange it with other systems and devices via APIs. That enables the following processes:
- entry categorization
- data filtering
- information sorting
- record tagging
- legacy facilitation for healthcare system integrations
- healthcare system interoperability
Another important opportunity AI in healthcare brings to EHRs is patient data interpretation. Machine learning can identify valuable information from unstructured data entries and provide insights into individuals or millions of patients. That implies extracting record details to find patterns, recommend diagnoses, and make reasonable conclusions.
In other words, AI in healthcare algorithms processes the records to give medical providers medical information that helps improve their decisions.
2. VR and AR
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are highly beneficial technologies for healthcare, both for aspiring and practicing medical specialists. To define:
- VR is a simulation of a reality generated by a computer, and one can access and manipulate it via goggles and controllers or gloves.
- AR is a platform that allows 3D renderings to be integrated into overlaying actual surroundings — they can be manipulated via a device’s screen.
With this, VR and AR bridge the digital and physical worlds, providing opportunities to perform actions and have experiences with no threatening consequences in real life while practicing the skills involved.
In detail, here are some of the helpful go-to applications of VR in the healthcare sector:
- nurse and physician training in performing medical procedures;
- surgery practice and training;
- enhanced & accurate study materials for medical students and researchers;
- enabled live team collaboration during training, procedures, and surgeries.
Here are some examples of how AR is used to benefit the healthcare industry:
- a detailed view of human anatomy for students, researchers, and surgeons;
- telementoring — providing remote and live first aid and patient care in emergencies or cases when additional expertise is needed from a specialist who is unable to be on-site;
- affordable, risk-free, and personalized practice environment for students and doctors where they can go through the same practice as often as they need to master the skills.
VR and AR enable simulation-based medical technology innovations and learning opportunities for medical students and practitioners with real-time feedback. That means completely simulating real-life surgery and procedure experience with no risks for the patients.
Besides, VR- and AR-enabled training is incredibly cost-efficient for educational institutions. It is less expensive to provide a virtual classroom than lifelike mannequins and other equipment for training — students can access their simulations via a smartphone or a laptop.
3. Telemedicine
Telemedicine implies providing and receiving healthcare services remotely via messages, voice calls, or video conferencing. It became huge during the COVID-19 pandemic and made remote consultation and treatment a must because of the threat of the virus spreading.
Today, AI-enabled telemedicine helps handle patients at the earlier stages of diseases via chatbots. This way, patients go through the following steps:
- A patient connects to the chatbot and shares their health concerns with no need to book a doctor’s time for a visit.
- Chatbots with AI AI in healthcare collect and analyze the information about the patient’s symptoms and identify the possible diagnosis for this patient.
- Besides the symptoms, patients can share images, such as X-rays or other types of scans. They can be viewed by the doctor or processed with AI- and ML-based technologies to come up with diagnoses before or during visiting a doctor.
- Then, depending on the severity of the case, the chatbot provides recommendations on further actions for the patient.
As the last step, the chatbot either offers to schedule a visit to the doctor or suggests measures to improve the person’s well-being. The visit, in turn, can also be remote, which is another telemedicine practice.
In the long run, AI-powered chatbots help reduce the workload for doctors and provide remote care for patients without neglecting the quality of the service. So besides giving convenience, accurate and faster diagnosis, and excellent customer service, AI in healthcare prevents burnout in medical staff and increases their job satisfaction.
4. Smart Wearables
Personal wearables are growing, which can be extremely helpful in healthcare, primarily if powered by AI in healthcare software. Because these small devices are close to the person’s body 24/7, or at least the majority of the day, and are connected to mobile applications, they do a great job of monitoring the person’s vitals and tracking health conditions.
There are different kinds of wearables one can have for health monitoring and improvement, like the following:
- smartwatch
- ECG monitor
- biosensor
- blood pressure monitors
- hearing aid
Smart Wearables Use Cases in Healthcare
So what are the capabilities that wearables bring to patients and doctors through the development of AI in healthcare? Here are some significant examples next:
- Remote patient monitoring. Doctors can get lots of data on their patient’s overall health or chronic conditions as they go on with their lives and will be notified when a patient needs urgent care based on the indicators logged by the device.
- Early diagnostics. Through data collection and analysis, wearables allow spotting threatening changes in one’s health early on and taking care of them before they become more serious.
- Fertility window predictions. Based on data like cycle phase, hormonal changes, body temperature, and other indicators wearables track, AI in healthcare analysis can predict the date of ovulation peak in women.
- Navigation for visually impaired people. By analyzing the surroundings and identifying objects, AI-powered devices can help guide visually impaired users through the environment safely and collision-free.
- Enhanced hearing aid. Audibly impaired people may experience a lost sense of space or excessive noise in their hearing aid. So innovative AI-powered support captures gestures and 3D motion through sensors to collect data about the surroundings and adjust the sounds, helping the person to “feel” the environment better.
- Everyday well-being improvements. With constant data analysis and push notifications, smartwatches are helpful in identifying life patterns and learning to make better lifestyle choices, like keeping ourselves hydrated and active daily.
Overall, wearables can be highly beneficial to our health regardless of the conditions we may be dealing with. The variety of devices and AI AI in healthcare capabilities allow finding a suitable wearable for anyone, from people with chronic conditions to those striving to improve their daily habits.
5. Robotics Assistance
Robots are yet another powerful machine that provides massive assistance in various applications. When driven by ML and AI in healthcare, these machines are intelligent, efficient, and capable of “learning.”
Among all, robotics assists in the following areas related to medical facilities directly:
- handling more straightforward procedures during surgeries, allowing the surgeons to focus on more complex parts of the operation;
- assisting medical staff in their daily duties of providing service;
- helping patients to rehabilitate after physical injuries.
Besides, robotics can be helpful in broader applications, including personal ones, to increase one’s quality of life. For example, here are some additional cases where robotics are helpful:
- Self-assistive robots help take care of the elderly, monitor and manage patients’ health conditions;
- Disinfecting robots can keep the area clean, which has been especially helpful in times of the pandemic and in areas with patients or just crowded places in general;
- Robots have been used to keep company and reduce the feeling of loneliness.
Of course, machines cannot replace humans entirely, but robots can successfully cover many tasks in the medical field.
Summing Up
AI is a growing technology increasingly adopted in various sectors, including healthcare. Among all, the prospecting AI-driven medical technology innovations include the use of EHRs, VR and AR, telemedicine, smart wearables, and robotics to enrich the capabilities of healthcare providers. And if you are considering adopting AI in healthcare project, contact us to find the best way to do that.
