AI and the future of healthcare
Discussed much more thoroughly in the last article AI in Banking, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful force for business. Does it have a place in Healthcare, too? You better believe it.
In this country, healthcare is a business, even if it is full of altruistic individuals that are just seeking to help others. We thwart disease; we repair damage; we cope with aberrations in bell-curve physiology; and most importantly, we make lives better.
But that doesn’t work very well without a solid business foundation! We still need to know where the money is coming from, where it is going, how it is invested, and what constitutes a good purchase decision for everything from a scanning electron microscope, right down to the price of cotton swabs.
For example, an additional MRI scanner would undoubtedly increase the daily throughput for our clients, but would it be better to hire a couple more technicians to keep the current machines running 24 hours per day? If a patient has a choice of waiting three weeks for an MRI or coming in today at 3 AM, which will they choose? People with day-to-day jobs might not have the time or be able to afford time-off during “office hours” for an appointment.
AI is the perfect tool for analyzing data, and although that problem may seem simple, there are dozens more that could be handled by Artificial Intelligence. An AI could do all the paperwork for a family physician. Insurance claims are mind-numbing in this country and take about half of a doctor’s time. If s/he sees patients for six hours, there is going to be six hours of paperwork to accompany that.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) was formed in Australia in 1928, by Rev. John Flynn by combining two fledgling technologies: the ability to fly with airplanes, and the ability to communicate with radios. Rev. Flynn had established the Australian Inland Mission (AIM) in 1912 to provide remote communities with medical aid.
The Outback of Australia is so vast that the AIM wasn’t up to the task. Too many people were too far away even from the hospitals dotted throughout the continent. Putting doctors in planes and equipping them with radios meant that medical assistance was usually only a couple of hours away. The RFDS flew 20,000 miles in their first year, over the course of 50 flights.
The advent of Telehealth has made it possible to deliver healthcare to small, remote communities. This is already common in isolated communities in Canada and Australia. Doctors, Nurse Practitioners, Nurses, mental health professionals, and many others can deliver their services by video link.
In a clinical environment, the remote medic can read real-time ECGs, listen to heartbeats and lung function, and have the patient or an aide perform physical manipulations, as well as just listening to the patient. It’s not perfect, but so much better than waiting months for treatments when going to a bigger city, or waiting for when a medical professional visits.
AI, on the other hand, could fill a role with an adaptation of our modern robot surgeons that are already in use. A remote doctor could manage the robot (complete with their friendly smiling human face visible to the patient), with its highly sensitive and well-developed feedback system, to perform tasks as if s/he were actually in the room. The patient, knowing that a human was at the other end of the machine, could become accustomed to this activity.
The AI would eventually become so knowledgeable that for everyday consulting it could manage entirely on its own. At the opposite end of the spectrum, robotic surgeons would continue to gather empirical knowledge from all the best surgeons in the world. While still monitored by a human surgeon for safety, this would one day allow flawless surgery of any kind. Everything in between these two extremes would be the domain of medical professionals, freeing up more time to interact with people.
