Unlocking the Future of Health—and Care—with AI

The following is a guest article by Jonathan Jesneck, Co-Founder and CTO at Firefly Lab.

Unlocking the future of healthcare with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic amongst tech and medical professionals alike. Leaps and bounds have been made since the term was first applied in medicine in the mid-1950s, but it wasn’t until the late 2000s that developments using AI in a variety of healthcare fields started to happen. 

Now, AI is effective across the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. The benefits are already being felt by many: 92% of healthcare institutes and professionals say they performed better as a result of technology and digital transformation. Such figures demonstrate how the impact of technology and AI isn’t just being seen in the lab. When staff feel they are performing better, their ability to deliver effective care is also transformed.

Legislation on AI needs regular updating alongside developments, and data sets need to be quality checked to ensure accuracy and reduce the potential for bias. But the possibilities are wide-ranging and exciting. So, let’s explore.

AI-Enhanced Patient Care 

Since the middle of the 20th century, one of the biggest areas we’ve seen development is biomedicine. AI learns based on what data is put in, so over time, AI has improved as more data has become available. In several medical disciplines, AI and Machine Learning (ML) can now diagnose better than most doctors. 

AI and ML are unlikely to replace doctors but rather become valuable second opinions. Rather than an AI doctor, we will likely see an augmented intelligence layered onto the healthcare already being provided.

AI can take in vast amounts of data and scan it thoroughly far faster than a manual researcher. This means it can analyze individual patient information and return suggestions for diagnosis and treatment, meaning patients can get treated quicker and see their outcomes improve. The future is AI-enhanced.

24/7 Personalized Healthcare 

AI is helping to personalize healthcare at scale and bring more tailored services to the public. This is in response to a growing desire for on-demand healthcare services accessed in real-time through websites or mobile apps. The global on-demand healthcare market was estimated at $150.67 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.94% until 2030, thanks to the growing adoption of internet-connected devices in the healthcare field. 

The global telehealth market size is also growing and is predicted to reach $455.3 billion by 2030. Smartphones are increasingly able to store medical data and monitor users’ health and fitness, in addition to being used to book appointments and communicate with medical staff. 

Unlike a traditional doctor’s surgery with opening hours, AI chatbots are available 24/7 to respond to patient concerns and check in with patients as a preventative measure to monitor any changes in a patient’s condition. In this case, AI is an assistive tool for care. 

The Best Cure is Preventative 

This type of telehealth is revolutionizing what our care industry could look like, with faster triages and attentive post-operative check-ins in place. In nursing homes, for example, devices can check patients’ blood pressure and collect data on their movements. AI can aggregate this data for a remote clinical team who can sound an early warning alert for nurses at the home if a patient’s condition appears to be worsening. AI is helping the medical community take a preemptive approach to health and care. 

People may be skeptical of AI’s effectiveness, but time-sensitive cardiothoracic cases are just one example where early-warning systems can make a big difference. In extreme cases, AI is being used to predict heart attacks and issues by reading for abnormal EKG shapes and wave patterns—and alert staff of potential danger. In everyday life, consumer demand has meant big brands and tech companies are starting to get in on the action. The Apple Watch can now detect early-warning signs of Arrhythmia, as well as alert emergency services if you’ve had a fall. 

Consumer habits are what is driving much of the change we see. Pharmacists in grocery stores are now common in many places, and people have become familiar with picking up their prescriptions along with their vegetables. In the future, we may see more telemedicine machines that can triage patients showing early-warning signs. 

Optimizing Education and Workforces 

It’s not only with patients that AI has revolutionary power. AI can also be used in medical education and for optimizing hospital workforces. 

The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034—something not helped by inefficiencies in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) match system that prevents several thousand medical graduates from practicing every year. But better matching for residents to training programs is just one example of where AI could make a difference. 

Removing barriers to care can help address the physician shortage. When chatbots can triage and monitor patients effectively, this allows doctors to attend in person to the patients that need them most, maximizing the impact they can make with the limited time they have available.

Medical education and workforce optimization are still relatively new fields for AI, but they have lots of potential to be unlocked. Learning accelerator platforms are showing trainee surgeons where their skills can be improved most, while experience-based skills profiles can be used to optimize surgical teams. AI is there to give oversight for its users to make more informed, data-driven decisions. It’s also there to put humans at the center of this decision-making. 

AI might have initially made headlines in the medical industry with its breakthroughs in the lab, but the future of AI is firmly set in the direction of patient care. The tools are here. It’s now about how people use and innovate with them responsibly.

About Jonathan Jesneck

Dr. Jonathan Jesneck is the co-founder and CTO of Firefly Lab, where he coordinates data security, machine learning, and the analytics of surgical and procedural training.  As an enthusiastic technologist, he has been developing machine learning and data mining applications for complex systems for 20 years.  He has founded and grown several technology companies focusing on large-scale analytics, machine learning, and medical data. At Duke University, he earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and M.S. degrees in Statistics and Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

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1 Comment

  • AI will assuridly enhance the prevailing wisdom and provide more accurate details of assessment and treatment options. But it cannot provide revolutionary solutions if its data sources are missing or compromised … GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Google and its Cancel Curture is a front-and-center illustration, with articles that don’t fit the prevailing narrative “not found” or “buried” from easy viewing. Does one really think that AI is immune from similar tweaking of what gets promoted?

    Look at the seeming lack of interest in 1) finding the cause of the worldwide obesity epidemic — you’re up against the corn lobby; 2) finding the cause and cure for cancer — extremely profitable as-is; and many other examples where the profit motive successfully promotes the medical equivalent of “buggy whips”.

    Don’t get me wrong — AI has great potential. But it must be allowed articles and research papers of all perspectives as input, and untainted by social-media-style filtering.

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