Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making steady gains in the healthcare industry, with the market expected to experience significant growth in the next few years.
According to a report from Grand View Research, the global industry for healthcare AI will exceed $31 billion by the year 2025. As AI starts to establish itself in healthcare, developers like Blue Label Labs are building healthcare apps to improve and expand upon services and engineers are creating robotic systems that can assist healthcare professionals with care.
With this level of growth, we can expect exciting developments within the next five years. To get an idea of what to expect, let’s look at some of the technologies that are starting to emerge in the field of healthcare AI:
Telemedicine
Telemedicine is one of the most common use cases for AI in healthcare. With these systems, healthcare professionals can provide services to patients remotely. Patients could use technologies like video or voice chat to consult with a doctor without having to go for an in-person visit. This could be used to provide a range of primary care services and it could also be valuable for expanding access to a wide range of specialists.
Image Analysis
A system could be used to analyze medical images and assist with diagnosis. At the current time, there are several systems in development for things like diagnosing cancer. With this type of system, there is the potential that a trained AI could detect cancer sooner than a human professional and the systems will be able to analyze thousands of images in the time it would take a human doctor to assess one image. This would take some of the workload off doctors and it could also lead to earlier diagnosis of life-threatening conditions.
Individualised Care
AI systems could be used to deliver care that is more individualized for the patient. As an example, the AI could be trained to analyze a patient’s medical history and provide a risk assessment for a wide range of conditions. This could inform doctors of what to look out for and which tests need to be performed when the patient comes in for a regular checkup. AI could also be trained to recommend different treatment options for different patients based on their medical history and other factors.
Drug Development
Developing new drugs is a time-consuming, expensive process. With AI to assist the process, the cost and time to market could both be reduced. AI could assist with clinical trials by helping researchers select the best candidates or by analyzing data. AI systems could also help drug researchers select the most promising compounds or identify existing drugs that may have benefits for different conditions.
The use of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare is relatively new. Most patients have yet to have firsthand experience with healthcare AI. Some patients may be reluctant to try the technology and there are still issues concerning user data and privacy that will need to be worked out. Furthermore, you have issues associated with liability and healthcare AI.
While many of the legal and social issues associated with healthcare AI will need attention, the technology is on its way to playing a major role in the industry. It will improve care in many ways, but there will always be the potential for negative consequences. As it stands, the current best applications seem to be that of assistive technology. AI won’t replace healthcare professionals, but it will be used to make them more effective.