Artificial Intelligence and the Healthcare Industry
Artificial intelligence is doing wonders all over the world and revolutionizing multiple industries. Such as being used in the customer service industry as chatbots, to help customers with their issues or being used in the financial industry to identify high-value customers by using predictive analytics through data mining.
Can artificial intelligence be used in the healthcare industry?
Let’s make something clear, next time you go to the doctor you won’t be talking to Siri. Artificial intelligence in the health industry will be used to assist healthcare professionals not replace them.
Of course, artificial intelligence is being used right now in the radiology sector to identify any abnormalities in a medical scan. In a study, comparing 101 radiologists to artificial intelligence software the most accurate radiologists outperformed the software, but the artificial intelligence had higher performance than the majority of radiologists.
Some other things that we can expect in the future of artificial intelligence and healthcare are using the power of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence can help doctors make better diagnoses’ which will reduce the risk of diagnostic errors. Right now 10 percent of all patient deaths are caused by diagnostic errors. Artificial Intelligence and doctors can work together to reduce that 10 percent of patient deaths caused by diagnostic errors to 0 percent.
Additionally, artificial intelligence can be used to make the process of booking appointments for doctors and tests by using an artificial intelligence chatbot.
This would make the doctor's job way easier instead of the doctors calling patients to tell them about their test results and explain it the patients the chatbot can explain it to the patients on behalf of the doctors. The chatbot will
Should Artificial Intelligence Be used in the Healthcare Industry?
Artificial intelligence can be really helpful in the health industry but should it be used. The artificial intelligence used in hospitals will have access to lots of patient information. Right now electronic health records are one of the things that have access to health records. However they are not secure; last year alone, 253 data breaches led to the loss of more than 122 million health records. Both software holds very sensitive and important information, this means they pose a security risk but the artificial intelligence software is at risk of being fed false information by hackers.
Opponents of artificial intelligence in healthcare have argued that artificial intelligence is not always reliable and can fail us from time to time. These failures can lead to catastrophic consequences if artificial intelligence prescribes the wrong medication or gives a patient the wrong diagnosis. This can result in several lawsuits but who would be blamed the physicians for not checking over the artificial intelligence system or the company that built that artificial intelligence.
As long as the medical professionals do not blindly trust artificial intelligence; artificial intelligence will make patients have a better experience at a healthcare facility. Doctors, artificial intelligence and the existing software used in the healthcare industry can work hand in hand to make healthcare better. But are we willing to take that risk? Are doctors willing to take that risk?
