Artificial intelligence adoption in healthcare is gaining huge traction
By 2021, the growth of artificial intelligence will have reached $6.6 billion in the US. Global estimates are being forecast at a massive $19.3 billion by the year 2025. This is attributed to the fact that AI is solving a wide range challenges for patients, care providers, and the healthcare industry overall. Yet, the prospects and full benefits of AI has not been fully utilized. There are many reasons why health providers should embrace AI.
Reducing healthcare costs
A key challenge to health care providers is the rising costs of providing quality healthcare to the rising population. Several initiatives have been sought to reduce this cost, among them being the adoption of artificial intelligence. Accenture estimates that savings of up to $150 billion can be achieved annually by 2026 in the USA alone.
AI applications are designed to address specific areas of patient care that make the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment not only to be effective but also accurate and accessible.
Efficient Staffing
Health care workers perform certain functions that can be done much better by machines. This leads to efficient utilization of human resource in healthcare. Machines can easily organize patient treatment plans. With the wealth of information and data, machines can also inform healthcare providers of the best treatment course to be taken for individual patients.
Preventive and diagnostic medicine
AI virtual assistants help pick up cues from peoples emotions and stature to make emotional intelligence and help monitor mental or physical health status through telehealth platforms. These assistants are able to detect any potential problems and literally alert people about their well-being.
AI can also provide surgeons and doctors with outcome based assistance that provides probability style answers based on past treatments and the wealth of health data available to the system.
Rehabilitative medicine
Some of the most advanced products of AI can be seen in the development of bionic hands. The prosthetic limb built at the Newcastle University in the UK can trigger a series of movements depending on the environment it is in. A camera, which instantaneously monitors the environment and gives the necessary movement to the user, is fitted at the front. This technology can be applied in other rehabilitative aspects of healthcare such as prosthetic legs, wheelchairs among others.
The extent of AI adoption is entirely depended on the healthcare provider’s stretch of creativity. Despite the advantages of AI, health care providers need to have the skills and intelligence to harness the technology and integrate it into the broader sectoral strategy.
Health automation platforms are building AI in ways that make them easy to use, and the health provider can take advantage of this technology.
