The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize the healthcare industry is immense. AI image analysis has become an important tool for healthcare providers when diagnosing medical conditions. By using AI algorithms to analyze medical images, such as x-rays, CT scans and MRIs, healthcare providers can detect signs of diseases or abnormalities more quickly and accurately. AI systems can also help free up time for busy doctors by transcribing notes, entering and organizing patient data on portals (such as EPIC) and diagnosing patients, which could serve as a means of offering doctors a second opinion. AI systems can also help patients with follow-up care and the availability of alternatives to prescription drugs.
AI has the capacity to remotely diagnose patients, thus expanding medical services to remote areas, beyond the world's main urban centers. The application of artificial intelligence systems in any field, including healthcare, entails a number of limitations and challenges. Then, artificial intelligence systems are trained with a portion of the collected data (also known as a training data set) and the remaining data is reserved for testing (also known as a test data set). Artificial intelligence systems have a reputation for being black boxes due to the complexity of the mathematical algorithms involved. However, there are unrealistic expectations about what AI can do and what the healthcare industry landscape will look like in the future. It is important for the user of an artificial intelligence system to have a basic understanding of how such models are constructed.
When the user of an artificial intelligence system is presented with the performance metrics of a model, he must ensure that the metrics appropriate to the problem are presented and not just the metrics with the highest scores. Recent advances in artificial intelligence and its applications for health care have created unprecedented opportunities for the medical field. While artificial intelligence is gradually being introduced in hospitals to help radiologists make diagnoses, Professor Barzilay is already researching future applications of AI. The application of artificial intelligence systems in health care for use by the general public is relatively unexplored. Table 1 below lists just a few of the hundreds of companies in the fields of technology, healthcare and pharmacies that carry out research on artificial intelligence systems and their applications in the health industry. Without these radical changes and collaboration in the healthcare industry, it would be difficult to achieve the true promise of AI to help human health. The future of AI in healthcare is bright and promising, and yet much remains to be done.
Although he didn't know anything about AI in healthcare, he decided to change course in his career and aim to improve clinical care with the help of AI.
