Moving Technology into Medical Facilities

The world is gradually pushing towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) which will most certainly bring about changes to the way we live, work and interact due to the introduction of intelligent technologies. The 4IR is building on a fusion of digital technologies that are blurring the lines between physical, digital and biological spheres. In the near future, diagnosis can be powered by machine learning and then trained by artificial intelligence.

How is Access to Healthcare Changing?

Imagine waking up and you don’t feel you particularly slept well and you might have come down with something. You check your sleep reports on an app like SleepScore for example that can track your breathing rate during the night or a smart band like Fitbit that can monitor how sound your sleep was. After your first quick check on your sleep app or Fitbit, you feel you still need a medical personnel’s advice; say your doctor at a hospital you are registered with. An AI-based app, like the Babylon Health app, can help you get a basic diagnosis by checking your symptoms and offering a treatment that matches your symptoms and medical history. You know no quick home remedies look sufficient enough to make you feel better so what better than an app like LIVI or Push Doctor to cut to the chase and set up that doctor’s appointment to figure out what’s wrong. There is the possibility of an AI voice-enabled symptom checker that can check your system and direct you to an emergency department if and when emergency care is needed. The added advantage of a system that can analyze patient's complex medical data to produce personalized treatment plans is all the reason why technology in medicine is aiming for the right purpose and is bound to turn around medicine for good.

How Intelligent Technology is helping Healthcare givers perform their jobs better?

Booking appointments and managing doctor’s availability has never been easier with AI-based systems. The use of AI in optimizing schedules for hospital staff decreases pressure on doctors, nurses, and administrators. Furthermore, tests are conducted using AI-based technology — Medical image processing and report generation are made easier with machine learning and deep learning algorithms. Doctors can explain that tumor detection is an easy task conducted more accurately with automated image processing. Imagine someone with a head injury who needs a doctor to determine the level of damage. An AI machine could help diagnose the degree of damage by being trained on multiple X-rays of previous head injuries. It would over time come to understand the severity of head injuries presented to it and provide informed results. This way it can help doctors provide an overall diagnosis for a patient a lot quicker, as they would have already gained insight on the severity of the injury from the AI machine.

AI can greatly improve the survival rates across a variety of diseases through early detection. It is important to emphasize that these tools are never going to replace clinicians. These technologies will assist by helping care providers see important signals in massive amounts of data that would otherwise remain hidden. But at the same time, there are levels of understanding that computers still can’t and may never replicate.

HOW AI WILL CHANGE HEALTHCARE IN A DECADE

Researchers and engineers around the world are working to develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems for health care, which have the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, helping to ensure that patients get the right treatment at the right time. By 2030, AI will access multiple sources of data to reveal patterns in disease and aid treatment and care. Healthcare systems will be able to predict an individual’s risk of certain diseases and suggest preventative measures. AI will reduce waiting times for patients and improve efficiency in hospitals and health systems. In 2030, AI-powered predictive healthcare networks will help to reduce wait times, improve staff workflows and take on the ever-growing administrative burden. The more that AI is used in clinical practice, the more clinicians are growing to trust it to augment their skills in areas such as surgery and diagnosis.AI will increase the efficiency of networked hospitals and connected care, thereby eliminating the rise or influx in a health crisis because of inaccessibility to health care providers.

Although the feasibility of these innovations in healthcare might not seem realistic now; 10 light-years before, there are clear signs that already show the coming to the reality of these processes.

What New Innovations have been recorded in the Healthcare Industry?

The latest innovation in healthcare spans from their use in the treatment or diagnosis of diseases.

1. Smart Pills — These fall under precision medicine and are responsible for looking out for problems in your intestines and other internal organs.
2. 3-D Printing — As the cost of 3-D printing has dropped, it’s become a more feasible tool for a wide variety of industries, especially healthcare.
3. Robotic Surgery — Robots that now assist surgeons.
4. Virtual reality — Medical VR has been proved efficient to stop the brain from processing pain and cure soreness in hospitalized patients. The software uses immersive VR technology offering motion and visual-based experiences that help in fixing brain discordance.
5. Health wearables — Wearable technology in healthcare includes electronic devices that consumers can wear, like Fitbits and smartwatches, and are designed to collect the data of users’ health and exercise.
6. Artificial organs — An artificial organ is a human-made organ device or tissue that is implanted or integrated into human interfacing with living tissue to replace a natural organ, to duplicate or augment a specific function or functions.

There is some hope after all that technology in medicine like other sectors in an economy will do more good than harm and increase the standard of life across the globe. From the thrilling innovations like implanted devices that instantly react to minute changes, software that can identify the best treatment options for individuals facing life-threatening conditions and fully-functioning autonomous surgical systems. The endless possibilities of med-tech and a direct application of machine learning will save lives, and produce results that are bound to improve over time. Med-tech will also be incredibly facilitating for patient care, despite fears that AI-based tech could remove the art of medicine from the practice. Now’s the big question ‘Do you believe AI can really transform medicine’?