How Artificial Intelligence Can Impact Healthcare

The healthcare industry is an ever-advancing field which constantly seeks new avenues of proliferating efficiency in its methods. New healthcare software has been introduced and tested to sharpen the patient experience. 

Introduced within the past decade, artificial intelligence is believed to be the next major proponent to monitoring and assisting in the path of patient health and recovery.

During recent years, patients have incurred increased responsibility for managing their own health. This idea of patients having an active and empowering role in their relationship with their provider, rather than simply accepting the guidance they are given has transformed the medical field on both the health professional and patient side. 

Participatory health is the term used to describe this new method in medical practice innovation. A major compliment to the introduction and implementation of participatory health is AI (Artificial intelligence). 

New research grants an outstanding perspective of the concepts related to artificial intelligence and participatory health. Participatory health aims to encourage patients to take charge of their bodies in tracking their own health. 

Under participatory health, patients are responsible for tracking, recording, and keeping up with their own active health through the use of technologies such as phones, tablets, and computers. By constantly keeping track of their own medical well-being, it allows medical professionals to better direct the patient towards certain medical treatments and medications to expedite their recovery or to maintain a sustained medical status. 

“AI has the ability to dive much deeper into an individual’s medical logs, seeking underlying patterns of habit and health”

Artificial intelligence takes the patient’s health information one step further while alleviating the workload of medical professionals. AI has the ability to dive much deeper into an individual’s medical logs, seeking underlying patterns of habit and health, locating certain determinate which could trigger negative reactions in a person’s body and giving cues for medical professionals to use to save money and resources through more precision testing on the patient. 

The medical field’s scarce resources, even in such developed countries such as the United States, will be greatly relieved of strain through the use of artificial intelligence.

Implications of using AI in Participatory Health

> Patient Perspective

Artificial Intelligence has the prospect of greatly enhancing the patient experience in the medical field and streamlining patient health. Patients would be able to keep an active role in their health and get on the spot, in-depth analysis of their health without having to make constant trips to medical professionals. 

However, with this new and revolutionizing technology comes challenges which must be considered to better optimize the patient experience when interacting with this new technology. Patients live busy lives, many with children, jobs, and hobbies which consume much of their day. 

Although health is important, a person may rationalize it lower on their list than other activities such as working or spending time with friends and family. A key design feature when considering the implementation of artificial intelligence in an individual’s daily life is ease of use and minimal interference in their time. 

By mitigating the variable of time management when using this system, proponents of the artificial intelligence systems will notice a much lower drop-out rate of patients using the system.

“Artificial Intelligence has the prospect of greatly enhancing the patient experience in the medical field and streamlining patient health.”

Many of the most effective and popular systems used today in an individual’s life focus on minimal interference with their time. For example, many mobile phones have apps installed which keep track of a person’s steps, which then automatically computes calories burned, activity time, and other useful information. 

Even apps which assist people in working out are interfaced for minimal interaction to allow a person maximum time actually performing these actions. Compare this to an app that tracks diet. 

Many people do not have the incentive to constantly input what it is they are eating and the calorie count of the food because it takes up an amount of time in their day they deem too much or too inconvenient. 

Some apps have mitigated this by allowing a person to simply scan the bar code of the nutrition they are taking in which automatically inputs their data. This information is key when understanding how mitigating time in an individual’s daily life increases the chances of success of the technology.

> Physician Perspective

Artificial Intelligence can provide great insight to physicians in better tracking and identifying the habits and conditions of their patients. 

Because physicians only see their patients on occasion and only receive information that the patient is willing to give, developing diagnosis and proper treatment is a challenge especially in an ever-changing medical market. Artificial Intelligence greatly mitigates that though the constant tracking and data mining of its patients.

Artificial intelligence can assist physicians and other providers in many ways such as identifying feedback on prescription and other over the counter drugs. This is done by artificial intelligence actively collecting feedback from social media and data collecting instruments such as smartwatches. 

For example, someone may post on social media that they constantly feel ill after starting a prescription drug. The artificial intelligence would take this and notice a trend in other people posting it. 

“Artificial Intelligence can provide great insight to physicians in better tracking and identifying the habits and conditions of their patients”

Coupling this with data taken from a smartwatch which may notice trends inactivity after taking the drug, the Artificial intelligence could send this to the physician which would allow them to make an informed decision about altering the dosage of the drug or even changing prescriptions. This is something which would take a much larger span of time without the use of artificial intelligence.

Much larger-scale use of the artificial intelligence in participatory health would be the medical field as a whole being able to much more promptly remove drugs from the market which passed FDA testing but are showing negative effects which surpass any benefit they may provide. With today’s technology, these drugs may be administered to thousands of patients before any decision is made to pull them off because of the lack of readily available information of their effects past testing. 

With the use of artificial intelligence in participatory health, medical providers will receive feedback on a large scale which would allow speedy data analysis. This could not only save patients the inconvenience of the negative side effects of these drugs but also save lives.

> Community Perspective

A large difference between how artificial intelligence through participatory health and other systems operate is rather than taking data from third-party data software, the AI systems which will be used in participatory health take from mainly text software such as social media accounts. 

However, this does not limit AI through participatory health to only text software. By being allowed to access social media data which all current systems do not do, the health systems providers will gain precious insight on the implications of their drugs being released to the public for use.

By combining conventional data in the health systems such as numerical inputs with the patient perspective (text data) health providers will be granted a much more in-depth analysis and be able to make decisions which are backed by data normally only obtainable inpatient studies. The major difference in this situation is this data will be readily available compared to a study which could take months, if not years to compile data on.

“As artificial intelligence grows and develops into the future, the data collected can be used on a global scale, effectively transforming medical practices around the world.”

As artificial intelligence grows and develops into the future, the data collected can be used on a global scale, effectively transforming medical practices around the world. The increase of access to patient health grouped with the accuracy and safety of information obtained will give the world community an extremely efficient and effective method of monitoring and transforming the world of medicine.

The many benefits of participatory health through the use of artificial intelligence can connect the global health community and expedite the advances of medical technologies in the near future. There are many challenges faced with the development of artificial intelligence and how to best implement it with minimal interference with an individual. 

There are also challenges faced with precision information gathering as to not overwhelm healthcare providers and the medical community. Artificial intelligence may be the next great advancement in medical technologies especially in a modern world where the internet is so readily available. 

By using artificial intelligence in participatory health, identifying major factors in a person’s health will expedite medication decisions, treatment decisions, and give essential data to providers, saving lives, money, and scarce resources. The direct and indirect benefits of utilizing this system will transform the medical community, saving billions of dollars on the side of both providers and patients.

Also, Read Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence