What is Medical Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
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One of the most challenging and valuable areas for AI is medicine. Both the opportunity and the risk are enormous in applying this technology to overall healthcare.
The value of improving medical care is immediate, especially for people with conditions that currently cannot be adequately treated. Artificial intelligence (AI) may have the potential to see what humans cannot and provide a level of care beyond our reach. And when AI algorithms work well, they can be shared widely in ways that reduce costs.
Risks and rewards
However, there are both risks and rewards to medical AI. In 2020 survey of medical professionals, 79% of respondents said they believe the technology can be useful or very helpful. But 80% fully or partially agree that the risk to privacy can be very high, while 40% fully or partially rate the potential risk as “more dangerous than nuclear weapons”.
AI has enabled the development of technologies that go beyond natural human processes, among other risks. Nanotechnology, gene editing, in-vivo net (INV), Internet of The agencies and amalgams such as Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) is one of those technologies that offers both promise and potential risk.
Also read: Top 10 applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare
What are the challenges of medical AI?
Scientists approaching medical AI want to take advantage of the technology’s natural capabilities while limiting potential harm. All applications of AI come with challenges, but using this technology to improve health is particularly complex. Here are some challenges:
- Imperfect sensor: Data collected from medical sensors is often noisier and less accurate than in other areas such as image classification. This is especially true when the sensors penetrate the breathing human body. CT or MRI scanners return blocky and multi-pixel images with many artifacts that can blur or obscure the details in question. X-rays may be better, but they, like CT or MRI scanners, can detect some types of body parts better than others.
- Chaos system: Organisms are often changing, sometimes very mobile. They are not a fixed target for algorithms. In many cases, sick people have more complex and dysfunctional systems that are harder for algorithms to analyze because they don’t function properly.
- Privacy: Medical information is often protected by strict laws and regulations because patients are sensitive about their personal data being shared with the wider world. While some clever and useful approaches can protect people’s identities, these require more work, can create potential errors, and hold inherent risks.
- Limited knowledge: While the medical profession has accumulated a wealth of knowledge about the human body, there are still many areas that remain a mystery. While AI algorithms can sometimes be useful when we don’t know much about the subject, there are limitations. Sometimes we don’t even know the right questions to ask.
- Cautious approach: Because doctors and nurses understand that there can be danger, they are often quite careful and hesitant to try new techniques.
- Strict regulations: Governments strictly regulate medical devices and software. For example, the levels of testing and development accepted for other fields often do not meet the standards for medical technology set by U.S. regulators.
What are the opportunities for medical AI?
While there are still profound challenges to the use of AI in medicine, there are also many opportunities to improve care. This technology can offer solutions that humans cannot duplicate. Here are some ways it can help:
- Chaos system: The human body is quite complex, and caregivers often have difficulty seeing complex or chaotic events. Noise or random unrelated events can blur their vision. AI algorithms focus on data and learn to extract valuable insights from hundreds of data reads. They can focus better than humans can.
- Better sensor: AI applications can have access to information that cannot be seen by humans. Some sensors pick up infrared or other wavelengths that cannot be perceived by the human eye. This technology can identify small changes with more accuracy than normal human perception. Better information can lead to better decisions.
- Unbiased: AI only processes the data it is provided with. Although there may be biases in the data itself, this blind focus still gives us the opportunity to eliminate confounding variables that can trigger human biases.
- Not tired: As long as there is power, AI applications can see the patient and give an opinion. This can be extremely valuable at night or when caregivers are tired or unavailable.
- An assistant, not a replacement: In most cases, AI does not compete directly with human caregivers. Technology can give advice to humans, who decide how much advice is accepted. This hybrid approach can ultimately capture the best of both human and machine intelligence.
What are some of the best roles of AI in medicine?
VentureBeat already covers other places Top 10 AI Applications in Healthcare More broadly, and briefly here are the medical fields covered there:
- Research
- Training
- Professional support
- Patient participation
- Remote medicine
- Diagnose
- Surgery
- Hospital care
How are big companies handling medical AI?
Leading technology providers that are investing heavily in AI are also targeting the medical market.
- Oracle has invest heavily in medical informatics in part by acquiring Cerner, a leading medical records company. Its product line will leverage Oracle’s investment in data science and AI to optimally treat patients in medical centers using Cerner medical records. Its Integration Behavioral healthFor example, tracking patient data to help prevent patients from committing suicide.
- Microsoft’s Azure cloud Supports various medical applications. Its Internet of Things (IoT) software support can absorb data from hospital medical devices, then connect the data to various AI packages. Its image analysis software can unlock details in radiometric data. It is also investing in specialized tools to analyze the huge data set collected by genomics research.
- Amazon is creating specialized version its various AWS products to support medical practice and research. Its SageMaker AI platform can work with HIPAA-protected patient records stored in HealthLake Service. Algorithms that support forward-looking research by finding connections and patterns can also decode some unstructured textual data using natural language models.
- By Google Healthcare data tools enables researchers and care providers to monitor and query information gathered from patients and study subjects. This HIPAA-compliant space provides direct access to all of Google’s artificial intelligence and data analytics options such as VertexAI.
- IBM offers a cautionary tale about the challenges facing the application of AI in medicine. After important investmentrecent company sold that is IBM Watson Health property for Francisco Partners, launched it as Merative. The software links algorithms under one brand to help researchers, regulators, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and patients. Its Clinical development For example, the management product encodes and stores the data needed to monitor patients across studies and visits. MarketScan processing route Search large patient databases to identify optimal options for providing care.
How are some startups delivering medical AI?
Thousands of startups want to use the power of AI algorithms to change medicine. Summarizing them in a short paper like this is impossible. However, it is possible to give a brief list with some examples to illustrate.
- Several startups are working on the front lines of care. Sensitive, for example, is creating a bot that can give automated advice to patients. This can save nurses time while delivering faster answers to patients.
- Others are doing further research in the lab. Atomwisefor example, wants to improve drug discovery by helping chemists and pharmacists evaluate a variety of potential drugs for effectiveness.
- A common use case is the analysis of medical images generated and interpreted by radiologists. Medical port, AetherAI, ButterflyNetwork, Enlitic and RadLogics are just a few of the startups creating platforms that help radiologists take and interpret images. They focus on improving productivity, limiting mistakes and in some cases enabling earlier and more detailed detection.
- Molecular device and PathAI are examples of companies putting similar algorithms into the work of pathologists, who often use imaging to analyze blood and tissue samples. For example, algorithms can speed up and automate repetitive tasks like counting cells that match criteria that indicate malignancy.
- Companies that specialize in capturing and storing medical records are also working on integrating artificial intelligence algorithms. Roaming Analysis and Sopris is integrating AI techniques to automate medical records by improving accuracy, automating classification, and increasing the accuracy of any internal data science research on this information.
Is there anything that medical AI can’t do?
Some of the obvious limitations of medical AI are similar to those that confuse all AI algorithms: If the training data is noisy, biased, noisy, or constrained, the resulting model will iterate. all of these problems.
Data collection is often more difficult in healthcare than in other fields. Between regulations, information sensitivities, and the difficulty of obtaining information in a clinical setting, data sets are naturally less comprehensive and more prone to errors. Nor is there a similar opportunity to re-implement data collection that might be available in some other areas.
In many cases, medical datasets are too small to train AIs. While some AI models are based on millions or billions of data elements, some medical studies include only a small number of patients. The scale is markedly different and there is no equal chance of relying on large datasets to eliminate errors.
Medical AI is also limited by the power of medicine itself. If human intelligence doesn’t have a possible solution, neither can AI provide one. If medical science is unclear or imperfect, so will AI. As reflected in the survey of medical professionals mentioned above, both the potential and risks of medical AI are enormous. The challenge is to maximize the former, while keeping the latter within an acceptable range.
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