Artificial intelligence is changing many industries drastically, and healthcare is one of the most significant areas where these changes are closely affecting human lives. AI is revolutionizing healthcare—not in the sense of robots replacing doctors, that is probably not a reality that most humans would be comfortable with, at least in the near future, but more nuanced changes in the healthcare industry.
Let’s start with one of the most important parts of healthcare – drug discovery. Drug discovery is the process by which biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies discover new drugs for a particular disease or therapy. Traditionally, drug discovery has been very expensive and time-consuming. With the advent of AI, drug discovery has become highly time and cost-efficient. AI algorithms can understand and analyse large amounts of data and predict the right drug targets. This helps in reducing the cost and time of the process, making research much more efficient than before.
Second most important part is diagnosis. AI is able to find patterns in large radiology images and is able to diagnose any new patient very effectively. We have seen very interesting results of the same in case of diabetic retinopathy on a project done by Google where AI was able to correctly diagnose diabetic retinopathy just by the retina scan image of a patient. Biggest advantage of AI in diagnosis is early disease detection. Early detection of diseases at a large scale is now possible with the use of AI. This can help drastically to reduce the disease burden from the population at large.
Another interesting sub-sector of healthcare which is impacted drastically by the advent of AI is personalised medicine. With the help of AI, now it is possible to create personalised treatment plans for a patient using only the patient’s genetic data, medical history and other relevant information. This can improve healthcare outcomes, help provide better care.
While AI is bringing interesting changes in the healthcare industry, there are various challenges that need to be tackled. These include ensuring data privacy, maintaining the accuracy of AI models -given that health is at stake- and carefully considering the ethical implications of the recommendations provided by AI systems.
One thing is certain, with the advent of AI in healthcare, a future where efficient, high-quality healthcare is affordable and accessible to everyone is within reach.
