The Executive Suite: Boost your practice with artificial intelligence

Gone are the days when the term artificial intelligence (AI) brought images of robots to your mind. Accenture calls AI a self-running engine for growth in healthcare and when combined, key clinical health AI applications could help the US healthcare economy save up to $150 billion in annual savings by 2026. The AI health market is predicted to touch $6.6 billion by 2021 at a compounded annual growth rate of 40%. AI can perform administrative as well as clinical healthcare functions with equal ease.

Clearly, AI-driven patient engagement can do a lot of good for your practice than you would ever imagine.

Here's a quick lowdown on the top benefits of leveraging the potential of AI for your practice.

Early and accurate diagnosis

You can do a lot with AI, be it collating patient data or preventing ailments even before they show early signs. IBM Watson and Google's DeepMind Health, for instance, are robust and reliable AI systems that work towards early diagnosis. While the former uses a double-blinded validation study to diagnose cancer, the latter with the help of machine learning and neural science builds an algorithm with a neural network for early detection of medical conditions.

"With between 12 million to 20 million people a year misdiagnosed, AI can help alleviate that real problem," says Dr. Paul Varghese, MD, MMSc, a cardiologist and clinical informatician who heads health informatics for Verily (Google Life Sciences). “The single biggest cause of variation in health care is the action of the human being. So, can we help that human being reduce the variation in his or her ability to recognize what is going on and then make the next right decision?” he asks.

AI facilitates deep learning technologies that can analyze images and identify identical patterns that can eventually cause diseases. As a medical practitioner, you can leverage these algorithms to diagnose diseases quickly and accurately. You can pinpoint specific signs in x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans using AI-driven software that is specifically programmed for this purpose.

A comprehensive approach to disease management

It can be overwhelming to decide the right method of diagnostics and treatment since there are symptoms to review, patient history to analyze, and potential side effects to consider. But AI empowers physicians with quality data that gives a 360-degree view of the patient's condition by overcoming research obstacles and processing huge amounts of data. It helps not only choose the right treatment but also an appropriate after-care regime.

As per the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), about 25% of US spending on healthcare—roughly $760-935 billion—gets wasted each year. But AI changes that and presents opportunities for health plan companies to revisit their billing practices and ensure improved patient care.

The patient care continuum is a critical aspect of medical practice and may benefit greatly from artificial intelligence. When employed correctly, it can build trust while ensure time and cost savings. A survey by Accenture confirms 47% of respondents were ready to depend on AI while availing healthcare services indicating a solid shift towards adopting a data-driven, personalized approach to patient engagement.

AI has been increasingly helpful in:

Screening heaps of data to provide actionable insights for physicians to make better decisions that improve outcomes while boosting patient engagement.
Accelerating care delivery and enabling interventions early on with the help of analytics.
Identifying and rectifying bottlenecks that impede patient satisfaction.
Converting unstructured data (notes, voice memos, etc.) with the help of natural language processing (NLP) to save physicians from laborious manual data entry work.

AI plays a role in virtually every stage of healthcare right from diagnosis and treatment to surgery and postoperative care. It’s here to empower us, not replace us and the onus is on us to ensure we leverage it well to improve workflows. Only then will humans and technology walk hand-in-hand to touch new horizons in healthcare and patient engagement.