Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Medical Field

Before the 20th and 21st centuries, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was but a far-fetched dream. Now, not only is it common knowledge but it is being judiciously used in the medical field. Innovations and research have gone far beyond what was envisioned in the olden days. AI usage has decreased of recent. Medical field experts like Yostus Hanna, are hopeful that the pace will pick up again the following year.

Yostus Hanna, also a retail lead at L’Oréal, has a vast working experience that has spanned 6 years. He has helped in managing the development of businesses in many firms.

Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Medical Field

AI is used for automated services and functions that sometimes exceed human capabilities.

In the medical sector, AI has served many functions when it comes to delivering quality healthcare. It can be used to do automated menial work, manage patients, and perform other tasks.

Innovators create AI to facilitate work and daily tasks, yet some issues stem from using AI. From system error to a data breach, injuring the patient, lack of emotional intelligence, and so on. These are the issues many people have raised concerns about and AI developers are trying to solve them. But then, effective solutions require the provision of funds, amenities, resources, and highly skilled developers.

Advantages of AI in The HealthCare System

The benefits of AI in the medical field are too numerous but a few of them are mentioned below.

Performing Beyond Human Capabilities: The major goal of inventing and using AI is to do jobs that even humans are not able to do. No matter how smart or experienced a medical practitioner is, he can never beat a computer. An example is an application that predicts if an internal organ is injured even before it is injured. Unlike when doctors can only identify the injury after 48 hours of the incidence. If a person has that application, he’d be able to prevent the injury from occurring or treat it early. This means that the AI App has improved the quality of life.

Sharing Medical Knowledge and Performances With Human Doctors: AI relays information about the patients they manage to the medical professionals. It is up to the professionals to use their discretions and emotional intelligence to deal with their patients. This method is often utilized if there is a lack of experts in that area. For example, a hospital with few radiologists or ophthalmologists will rely on AI that can analyze images. The AI will read the images analyze them, and interpret them in a way medical personnel will understand. Then the medical professional will find it easy to diagnose and take necessary actions.

Doing Tedious, Menial Jobs: AI provides automated services that are time efficient compared to using humans to do it. AI can be integrated into computers to make work easier and faster. Many healthcare practitioners spend considerable time filing patient records, typing information, and reading screens. AI can get these done in a matter of minutes or seconds even. It can simplify information into organized data, input and arrange patient records rapidly. This is leave time for medical practitioners to physically focus on their patients and give quality care.

Allocate Resources and Manage Patients:

This is more or less like a behind-the-scene function because it falls on the management department of the medical center. The management department of the healthcare center uses AI to manage and distribute resources accordingly. It can foresee if any department is understaffed or need temporary workers. It can also determine which patients need more urgent medical care if doctors are scarce.

Disadvantages of AI in the Healthcare System

There is nothing that has benefits that won’t have negative effects.

Here are the issues arising from using AI in medicine:

It Can Make Mistake and Injure the Patients:

AI can sometimes make wrong predictions due to system malfunction or wrong coding or obsolete technology. When this happens, it can injure the patients or create subsequent problems. In the event an AI app wrongfully prescribes a medicine for a patient, it can be fatal. Or if it didn’t notice tumors in patients, erroneously analyze patients’ data or images. This might harm the patient and destroy the reputation of the attending physician and the medical center.

Even though a human medical error occurs often, AI medical errors elicit different reactions. A medical error can potentially harm many patients at once unlike human medical error.

Fragmentation of Patients Data:

How available is data for AI systems? Dealing with a large amount of different data from different sources leads to fragmentation of data. On one hand, these various data are needed to know the past medical and health history of a patient. This will help the provider in making informed diagnoses and treatment decisions. On the other hand, the data have to be split into different computers in different forms. It leaves room for an error to occur, causes comprehension of data, and is costly.

Data Breach:

This is the most common and problematic issue of AI. The gathering and fragmentation of large data have created avenues for hackers to steal data. AI innovators need to gather patient data to develop apps for the health sector. Some data collection has violated some people’s privacy and has led to legal cases in court. Many patients claim their medical centers didn’t get their permission before sharing their medical information with software developers. Few have also been accused of revealing patients’ data to third parties who used the data for advertisement purposes.