Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful and disruptive technology that has witnessed tremendous growth at an exponential rate. From digital assistants like Alexa and Siri to driverless vehicles, businesses belonging to diverse industry verticals use artificial intelligence. The use of AI in healthcare and AI in the medical field is also increasing tremendously. Scientists, researchers, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies have been using artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and other cutting-edge technologies to fight against various diseases and improve the health of patients.
Here are some recent advancements of AI in healthcare.
Cancer detection
- According to data from the ICMR, India is expected to record a 12 percent rise in cancer cases by 2025.
- The number of cancer cases in India are on the rise, with nearly 14 lakh cancer cases being reported in 2020.
- Cancer is a disease that involves uncontrolled proliferation of cells in the body.
- Cancer can affect people belonging to all age groups.
- Detecting cancer at an early stage is important to prevent its spread to other body parts.
- The use of AI in the medical field is making this possible.
- With medical AI, it is possible to identify abnormalities in the radiographs at an early stage.
- Early detection of unusual body tissue growth that could be a warning sign of cancer helps in early treatment.
- AI in the medical field is being rapidly used in cancer screening and detection.
- Medical AI in diagnostics provides help to the radiologists in interpreting scans and images more precisely.
- Using multiple data sets (genomic data) and images, AI in healthcare makes it possible to improve the quality of cancer treatment.
Early prediction of cardiovascular diseases
- Scientists working on AI research have demonstrated that it is possible to use artificial intelligence to predict the onset of cardiovascular diseases and enable doctors to begin treatment early to alleviate the problem.
- AI researchers have used machine learning algorithms to go through 1.6 million electronic health records consisting of diagnostic reports, scans, and medical procedures performed, after eliminating all PII (personally identifiable information).
- The study helped AI researchers to understand interactions between different comorbidities and identify those that aggravated the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
- AI researchers made use of probabilistic graphical networks (PGM), a form of AI, to calculate how comorbidities impacted the risks associated with congenital heart diseases, heart transplantations, or sinoatrial node disruption (SND).
- Researchers found that the need for heart transplantation was much higher in individuals who had comorbidities or those who were consuming certain drugs like milrinone, which is a vasodilator.
Reproductive technologies and pregnancy prediction
- The use of AI in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) can help streamline patient care, improve the outcomes of IVF, and lower the cost as well for patients. However, this application of AI in healthcare is only in the initial stage and yet to realize its true potential.
- Extensive AI research is being carried out to predict the chances of pregnancy.
- Various machine learning algorithms are being used to find out the probability of conception in couples who are planning for a baby.
- Using various predictive models in AI, it has become possible to identify problems of infertility in couples.
- Medical AI is an important technology for couples who are trying to conceive, and also for reproductive centers who are helping women to have a baby, especially those who gave just stopped contraceptives.
AI in healthcare – The future
- There are various challenges like rapidly increasing number of chronic diseases, aging population, shortage of medical staff that the healthcare industry is facing.
- In order to overcome this, the need for AI in healthcare and artificial intelligence in medicine is drastically increasing.
- AI in healthcare is being used by many healthcare centers to overcome challenges. However, there is still time before the full potential of AI in healthcare is realized.
- In the future, ML models and hybrid AI models would dominate the healthcare space.
- The implementation of ML algorithms, natural language processing, and robotics would provide answers to many complex questions related to the health of individuals.
- A lot of AI research is being carried out by data scientists across the globe.
- Once AI reaches facilities like hospitals, healthcare centres, and other medical establishments, it will help improve patient care and save more lives.
- Not just patients, but medical and non-medical personnel would also benefit from the use of artificial intelligence in medicine and healthcare.
