The artificial intelligence (AI) healthcare market, valued at $11 billion in 2021, is projected to be worth $187 billion in 2030. That massive increase means we will likely see considerable changes in how medical providers, hospitals, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and others in the healthcare industry operate.
Better Machine Learning algorithms, more access to data, cheaper hardware and the availability of 5G have contributed to the increasing application of AI in the healthcare industry, accelerating the pace of change. AI and ML technologies can sift through enormous volumes of health data—from health records and clinical studies to genetic information—and analyze it much faster than humans.
AI can help make healthcare operations more efficient
Healthcare organizations are using AI to improve the efficiency of all kinds of processes, from back-office tasks to patient care:
- Administrative workflow: Healthcare workers spend a lot of time doing paperwork and other administrative tasks. AI and automation can perform many of those mundane tasks, freeing up employee time for other activities. For example, doctors and other clinicians can dictate notes hands-free, giving them more face-to-face time with patients. AI computer-assisted documentation can provide clinicians with suggestions that keep medical records as thorough as possible. AI can also help with accurate coding, information sharing between departments and billing.
- Virtual nursing assistants: One study found that 64% of patients are comfortable with the use of AI for around-the-clock access to answers that support nurses provide. AI virtual nurse assistants—which are AI-powered chatbots, apps or other interfaces—can answer questions about medications, forward reports to doctors or surgeons and help patients schedule a visit with a physician. This sort of routine monitoring and scheduling takes tasks off the hands of clinical staff, who can then spend more time directly on patient care, where human judgment and interaction matter most.
- Dosage error reduction: AI can help identify errors in how a patient self-administers medications, leading to better patient health outcomes and reduced healthcare costs and hospitalizations. One example comes from a study in Nature Medicine which found that up to 70% of patients don’t take insulin as prescribed. Using an AI system of wireless sensing, a tool that sits in the patient’s background (much like a Wi-Fi router) can flag errors in how the patient administers an insulin pen or inhaler.
- Safer surgeries: In some instances, AI allows surgeons to operate in tiny spaces instead of doing open surgery. AI-enabled robots can work around sensitive organs and tissues, reducing blood loss, infection risk and post-surgery pain. Robotic surgery often means less scarring and shorter recovery times than traditional surgery.
- Fraud prevention: Fraud in the healthcare industry is enormous, at $380 billion/year, and raises the cost of consumers’ medical premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. Implementing AI can help recognize unusual or suspicious patterns in insurance claims, such as billing for costly services or procedures not performed, unbundling (which is billing for the individual steps of a procedure as though they were separate procedures), and performing unnecessary tests to take advantage of insurance payments.
Source: https://www.ibm.com/blog/the-benefits-of-ai-in-healthcare/