According to the research of Global Market Insights, between 2017 and 2024, an explosive annual growth of 40% is expected in the field of the use of artificial intelligence in the healthcare market. How are the medical AI systems used in practice today and what developments will soon come into use?

Artificial intelligence products for the health sector are developed by large companies, in particular Microsoft, Apple, Google and IBM. According to analysts, there are 800 such firms in the world.

Currently, AI technologies are used for disease diagnosis, genome research, drug development and medical imaging. Devices created on the basis of AI, are able to learn, analyze large amounts of information, and also make decisions independently. It saves time, money and allows serving patients more effective.

Analysis of human data and diagnosis

A complete medical history, data on analyzes for all the years of treatment, the current state of the organism – all this data can be collected and structured by the artificial intelligence system. The data loaded into database will be processed by the electronic brain quickly. This will save time, increase the accuracy of the diagnosis and treatment.

This is how the IBM system, called Watson Health, works. It is able to identify possible problems with the vascular system, recognize cancer, determine whether the patient is prone to blood clots. IBM Watson can immediately study new information and draw conclusions based on it. For instance, in 10 minutes, artificial intelligence from IBM analyzed 20 million scientific articles on oncology and made a correct diagnosis based on the information received.

Several hospitals in the UK are already using a similar development from Google – DeepMind Health. It also helps to process information about human health, shares its findings with the physician, who as a result makes the final diagnosis.

Some systems, for example Ada, a service developed by the British company of the same name, can directly communicate with people and give them recommendations. The medical application communicates with the patient, asks about the symptoms and complaints, and gives recommendations, including which doctor should be visited, as well as offers to contact a specialist for a remote consultation.

The program based on AI Sense.ly monitors the condition of people who have recently undergone long-term treatment or suffer from chronic diseases. It was developed by a startup from San Francisco and collected 8 million venture investments at the initial stage. The application was created in order to structure data about a person's health; it also offers to make an appointment with a specialist and gives recommendations. The system is also able to remind you of the time of taking medication and the need to visit a doctor.

Similarly, there are systems of genetic analysis that help to understand the primary cause of the disease. One of the platforms for testing the human genome is Sophia Genetics. It reveals the patient's propensity for various diseases and draws the doctor's attention to it.

Planning of work of medical institutions

Artificial intelligence is able to organize patient visits to a specialist, make schedules, redirect people from one queue to another. In short, to do everything to ensure that a person is served more quickly, and the doctor doesn’t overwork (after all, this may affect the productivity).

In particular, the AI system developed at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in the UK helps to determine if a patient is going to make MRI diagnostics. Artificial intelligence analyzes general data about a person, including the age and remoteness of home from the hospital. The forecast accuracy is 85%. This allows scheduling appointments for the procedure and do not lose valuable time for diagnostics.

The British clinic UCLH is going to use AI technologies to determine the urgency of providing patients with help. Based on the initial analysis of people who enter the clinic, the AI will make conclusions whether the patient's condition is dangerous, and depending on this, a queue to the doctor will be formed.

Medical Imaging

AI systems help to automate routine processes in hospitals, accelerate them and make them more effective. This concerns the visualization of a variety of medical images: ultrasound, CT, MRI. Studying these data and comparing it can take a lot of doctor’s time, while AI is able to cope with the task several times faster than a person.

So that the Zebra Medical Vision system works. It is based on a neural network, which was trained on several hundred thousand pictures of patients with lung problems. Thanks to this, Zebra Medical Vision helps to conduct diagnostics in the field of pulmonology.

In its turn, IBM developed the Arterys service, which can analyze data, draw conclusions and create visualization of the human heart. Like all similar systems, Arterys is based on a learning neural network.

Development and selection of medication

Medications are rather complicated organic compounds, and the search for a correct formula takes a long time. They require not only a careful approach to the development, but also a lot of tests, checks, which also do not give a 100% guarantee that the drug will work.

Artificial intelligence can help developers here as well: it is able to quickly create the correct chemical formulas of drugs, using specified parameters. For example, Atomwise now uses AI to formulate medicinal formulas. Another similar project was developed by Berg Health.

Using a similar principle, a drug is selected for a particular patient, and the analysis of the medicine effectiveness is carried out. For example, the MedClueRx system is designed to determine which drugs are more suitable for nervous disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, epilepsy.

Summary

The automation of data collection in hospitals will make diagnosis of diseases more accurate, as well as will help to effectively predict and prevent diseases. Thus, artificial intelligence will not only facilitate the work of doctors, but will also help to save more patients.

In terms of economics, the use of AI technologies is beneficial, because the costs of the health care system will decrease, and the quality of medical services will grow.

Despite the fact that innovative technologies have just started to be introduced into the medical field, in 2021 the profit of companies on the AI healthcare market will reach $6.1 billion (according to the research of Frost&Sullivan).