Currently, artificial intelligence is experiencing significant popularity in the Healthcare industry and is expected to have broad applications that will transform the industry, including the way medical professionals interact with their patients.

In fact, AI has already been leveraged by back offices and supply chains and has been instrumental in increasing their efficiency. Another exciting application of AI has been in the pharma and healthcare industries. Research has shown that big data strategies and AI-assisted efficiencies in trials, research and clinical practices can save up to $100 billion a year.

Let’s look at a few key ways in which AI is transforming the Healthcare Industry and improving efficiency, accuracy and better patient outcomes.

1. Streamlining medical processes
In healthcare, AI and deep learning have already been leveraged in image classification. It allows healthcare professionals to extract information from multiple images to help them mark files as well as low priority x-rays, leading to a quicker, easier and more accurate process. The technology has also been influential in helping improve diagnosis for heart disease and lung cancer. AI-based applications can also make the process of primary doctor funding and referring patients to specialists faster while providing quicker, more accurate and actionable insights for doctors and their patients.

Although it is crucial to note that AI does not make humans redundant. In fact, it allows healthcare professionals to be freed of mundane tasks and focus their efforts on providing more personalized care. AI tools can be leveraged to help medical staff analyze routine pathology or radiology results quickly and accurately which allows them to see more patients and as a result, generate more revenue.

2. Detecting serious health conditions
Leveraging data and insights from wearables devices help medical professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. In fact, smart health trackers are able to gather sophisticated data regarding a person’s health condition to detect underlying health conditions like hypertension and sleep apnea.

3. Streamlining mundane tasks
Healthcare institutions all over the world are realizing the potential power of AI to automate their decision-making processes, improving financial and administrative efficiencies, automate different segments of their supply chains and streamlining regulatory compliance functions.

Research shows that repetitive tasks in particular stand to benefit the most from the implementation of AI and machine learning in their processes. The ability of AI to repeat tasks endlessly without error, fatigue and efficiency makes it an indispensable part of any healthcare workforce.

4. Implications for pharmacy, research and innovation
The applications of AI also extend to the pharmaceutical, drug and medical R&D sectors. It is estimated that applying big data strategies to create more informed decision making can lead to optimized innovation, improved efficiency in medical research and clinical trials as well as developing new tools for physicians, consumers, insurers and regulators to adhere to the promise of more personalized approaches.

Let’s consider the pharmaceutical industry, a company could leverage AI to automate their intake analysis, follow up and reporting of adverse event reports associated with their drug. Also, the R&D processes for new drugs tend to be slow and expensive. AI tools can help in identifying which compounds are most likely to succeed based on early-stage clinical data.

The post 4 Key Ways AI is Transforming the Healthcare Industry first appeared on Tech Firefly.