DR DOLPHIN
SPRING 2021
The Potential of AI in Medicine Today The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare has always been a hot topic, one debated for years due to its ethical, legal and social standpoints. However, while we look at artificial intelligence as a construct of the future, one would be surprised to realise how prevalent it is in the present day and how each individual has most probably engaged with at least one form of medical AI sometime in the past six months! However, don’t be fooled into thinking that we have embraced very much of it, AI holds an enormous amount of potential in the medical field and these possibilities can only unfold with time. Before we start, let me explain the true nature of the AI I am referring to in this article, and how it is used in this field of practice. Medical AI fundamentally refers to the use of artificial intelligence technology in the healthcare system through automated processes. Essentially, it holds the potential to completely transform the practice of medicine by helping doctors more accurately treat patients, make more precise predictions about a patient's future health and additionally, recommend the most suitable and beneficial treatments through logical constructs. Moreover, it should be noted that studies have shown that an astonishing 50% of practices carried out by medical professionals have the potential to become automated with the use of AI - a rather frightening figure! The question will always be asked - why would we want to use technology instead of humans? And what are some examples of ways that we have already started doing so? Essentially, what issues might arise from these technological advancements in
the world of medicine - is technology always better? There are a myriad of duties that medical professionals face every single day, a large proportion under the umbrella term of ‘patient care.’ This care consists of gathering data from consultations, processing this data and retrieving results to then generate a diagnosis for the patient by using other sources of data as a reference. Then comes determining the appropriate treatment method, preparing this treatment, monitoring the progress of the patient and finally, ensuring the patient is provided with the correct aftercare through appointments, etc. Yes, it is a lot of work that these healthcare professionals are faced with daily - all for one problem, one patient. A study in 2016 showed that physicians spend a lot more time on entering data and general desk work than actually engaging with their patients! Therefore, I think we’d all be relieved to know that the large majority of the above care has the potential to become automated using AI. Now, what benefits does this hold? Creating automated systems that can carry out these tasks without a human having to do so manually results in more efficient and faster task completion, freeing up a great deal of time for doctors, thus enabling them to focus on other things that cannot be automated. There will always be certain tasks better done by humans, while others more efficiently done by computers by preventing human calculation errors, saving time, etc. By using AI for certain tasks, the medical system won’t just become more efficient but may also help us move towards more ‘precision medicine’. If experts are able to find a good balance between the use of AI
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