How Does AI Help Modern Healthcare, Exactly?

The term AI means a lot of things to many people. Unfortunately, most of them are bad. Pop culture has almost always portrayed AI as something bad, something that will spell the end of humanity if it's not kept in check.

But there is one good thing about it that people might not be too aware of: its potential in modernizing healthcare. And the world has seen what artificial intelligence can really do in the medical field, with experts believing that artificial intelligence in healthcare will grow at an almost 50% rate between 2017 and 2023, according to Business Insider.

Here's a look at the different ways AI helps medical professionals and systems all over the globe.

AI Processing Power Is Just Nuts

The medical field likely deals with way more data than people are aware of. In fact, just making a single diagnosis requires professionals to consult mountains of information, all in an attempt to ensure accuracy.

The reason is simple: misdiagnosis can spell the difference between life and death. Plus, it can also be punishable by law, given the right circumstances.

This is where the insane processing power of AI comes in. Neural networks can make an accurate diagnosis in a fraction of the time it takes a human doctor to do the same thing. Artificial intelligence will never, ever get tired of sifting through tons of data. And with enough information, neural networks can even make their own predictions as to which treatment will fare better for an individual patient.

If the technology improves enough, a lot of people don't have to die from being misdiagnosed or diagnosed too late. In fact, the UK government is already looking into AI's potential to prevent thousands of cancer deaths every year by 2033.

Read Also: Top 10 AI Healthcare Startups For 2021

AI Can Help Develop New Medicines

Skyrocketing research and development costs have bogged down the pharmaceutical industry for years. It's also taking way too long to develop a type of medicine for specific illnesses that are even partially effective. And even if they are effective, only 10% of those medicines get to hit the market.

Again, AI's processing power proved its mettle in this field. In fact, a robot named Eve facilitated one of the biggest artificial intelligence breakthroughs in the development of drugs when it discovered that triclosan, which is a common toothpaste ingredient, could be used to fight malaria-based parasites, writes BuiltIn.

Fully-Personalized Healthcare Is Now Possible with AI

Medicine has never been one-size-fits-all. One person may have the same illness as another, but the two patients' needs will differ greatly and thus will require different treatments. With the power of neural networks, however, truly personalized healthcare is now achievable.

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina managed to achieve this by using AI from IBM to come up with very specific treatments for over 1,000 patients. Right now, it seems like a small number, but just imagine how many more lives can be saved once the technology progresses even further.

AI Can Help Save Lives, And That's a Fact

Don't lean in too much on the "AI can spell humanity's doom" stereotype. Sure, the danger is there, provided that the artificial intelligence grows sentient and hostile. But you can never deny the fact that AI immensely helps the medical field and will likely do so for decades to come.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce