Contributed
Metadescription: For hospitals as well as investors like Rewired and Tej Kohli, robotics and AI are the key to unlocking a healthcare revolution. Here’s how AI is transforming hospitals.
How AI is Transforming Our Hospitals
The interest and enthusiasm for AI from across the medical community, and spanning numerous countries, is growing. And, backed by research and investments, it is predicted to continue growing. There are many examples of how Ai is being used, both large-scale and small-scale, to improve the daily lives of medical professionals and hospital staff, as well as the experience and outcomes for patients.
One example is within radiology. AI is poised to transform diagnostic imaging, allowing higher accuracy and productivity, and subsequently, more personalised treatment planning. This will also help radiology departments handle larger volumes of imaging, which is particularly helpful during staff shortages – a pressing concern for many hospitals already stretched thin by an ageing population.
And in Florida, the Flagler Hospital in Saint Augustine is using AI to help improve the quality and cost of the treatment of pneumonia, sepsis and other high-cost, high-mortality conditions. It does this by using topological data analysis to group patients who have been treated similarly, and the relationships between those groups. Once it has collected the data, an AI algorithm generates treatment groups.
There are also projects such as Open Bionics, backed by the venture studio Rewired, which are designing affordable prosthetics that use a combination of AI and robotics to simulate the sense of touch. For Rewired and their investor Tej Kohli, AI projects such as these are a vital part of employing disruptive technologies to improve lives.
There are many examples of small-scale changes that have happened thanks to the innovation of start-ups and specialist software developers, but upscaling requires overcoming certain barriers, including funding and regulations, as well as large-scale validation studies and better funded research and development. The tide is starting to change however, with more funding being pumped into the industry.
Now, we are seeing hospitals beginning to employ AI in almost every area of their services. An informatics hub has just been launched at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, for example, to help drive the use of technology in healthcare.
The hub, called Drive (Digital, Research, Informatics and Virtual Environments) aims to revolutionise clinical practice and improve patients’ experience across the NHS, by using technology and data to provide safer, data-driven care.
It allows patients to virtually explore the hospital before their visit, and virtually meet other patients who will be staying at the hospital when they do. The move shows the potential to develop scalable solutions to the problems facing healthcare, including budget cuts, staff shortages and ageing populations.
AI is also reducing pressures on staff. For example, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust recently announced plans to use AI to carry out tasks that have up until now been performed by doctors and nurses, including diagnosing cancer on CT scans and deciding which patients are seen first. The first focus will be using AI to help reduce waiting times in accident and emergency departments.
From taking over complex medical tasks to improving the general administrative tasks, hospitals powered and run primarily by artificial intelligence now look less like a possibility, and more like a certainty – improving services and ensuring that patients get the treatment they deserve.
