With media coverage over the years, it is impossible to not have heard about artificial intelligence, a technology that enables humans and computers to do things that often require a human’s brain and much time. In other words, artificial intelligence is able to deal with large amounts of information, and trained to solve problems, spot patterns and make recommendations.
The healthcare industry has joined the wagons of the industries adopting the use of artificial intelligence to increase patient care and manage their administrative burden. According to statistics, more than 70% of healthcare organizations are using AI technology in their day-to-day practice.
Although the use of AI in healthcare helps improve clinical efficiency, patient experience, drug research and surgery precision, it is important to note that Artificial Intelligence cannot replace human intelligence, it can only reduce the extra hours spent in doing tasks.
With this exponential growth, how can the healthcare industry benefit the most from this game-changing technology? In this blog, Unify Medicraft takes us through the meaning and the future of AI in Healthcare including its applications and benefits.
What is Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare?
Artificial Intelligence is designed to think and learn like humans and has made steps towards a vast and multidimensional opportunity in the healthcare industry. The use of AI in healthcare is growing at a very high speed by improving medical diagnosis, clinical trials, treatment, and personalized care.
Many healthcare providers are already using Artificial Intelligence is used as a co-pilot in many facets of healthcare.
Some of the ways AI has been assisting in healthcare include the following :
- Reviewing MRI and X-ray-generated images
- Automating administrative tasks
- Personalizing treatment options
- Identify abnormalities in radiology images with high accuracy
- Helping to make informed decisions about patient treatment and care.
How is Artificial Intelligence Being Used in Healthcare?
Medical Diagnosis
Artificial Intelligence can analyze a large number of medical data accurately and will not be tired in the process. Utilizing the help of augmented intelligence, radiologists and cardiologists can now examine images such as MRI scans and X-rays with more precision.
The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare helps radiologists highlight every detail of a scan. This enables instant interpretation, reducing human error. Wearable devices also help in collecting and transmitting data, improving patient care and helping healthcare providers make informed decisions.
Drug Discovery
According to statistics, clinical drug development projects often take many years and have up to 90% failure rate. However, AI has the potential to enhance it by helping researchers understand how different molecules interact with each other.
With this process, researchers are able to easily predict if a particular drug structure can be used to treat certain diseases. It also improves the efficiency and success rate of drug development while increasing the process of bringing new drugs to treat deadly diseases.
Better Patient Experience
Healthcare providers now have electronic patient portals and other tools to assist patients with routine tasks such as scheduling appointments, communicating in different languages with physicians, and requesting prescription refills. These tools can also verify insurance and pull up the patient’s chart, making the process more efficient.
Healthcare Data Management
AI applications are reducing the workload of administrative staff in every healthcare organization. This ability to analyze large data sets and share them with different systems or departments has reduced administrative errors, and patient data is recorded with precision.
Risk Identification
Artificial Intelligence is able to analyze large volumes of patient data, providing accurate details of patient journey for healthcare providers. This information allows them to know treatments that can affect patients and the best possible outcome of every treatment plan given to them.
The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Industry
Real-Time Access to Data
AI is able to swiftly handle massive volumes of data and speed up locating and retrieving the information required on a specific patient. This also reduces the time it takes to resolve problems and know if patients will respond positively to specific treatment.
Increase Diagnoses Efficiency
Every disease needs an accurate diagnosis and treatment to make it efficient and safe for human use. Artificial Intelligence makes use of prediction algorithms to examine and evaluate patient symptoms to accurately determine the diseases the patient is suffering from. With this process, we now know that accurate diagnosis and treatment are attainable in the healthcare industry.
Cost Savings
We cannot overlook the affordability of artificial intelligence in healthcare. AI has the potential to lower both healthcare providers and patient costs while increasing accessibility to healthcare to everyone who needs it.
Faster Data Processing
Everyday healthcare providers deal with patient data and can become confused when they are not properly organized. Artificial Intelligence can easily handle and go through this massive amount of patient data and make accurate conclusions about improved medical treatments.
Reduce Administrative Staff Burden
One of the most significant problems AI solved in healthcare is helping to reduce the burden of the administrative staff. For many years, staff burnout has been a big problem in the health system as patient volumes grow tremendously. AI can easily search out patient information within seconds, reducing the work of the clinic staff.
Improved Patient Retention
When patients receive accurate treatment, it keeps them healthy and makes them come back every time. When hospitals have a seamless revenue cycle, it leads to fewer missed patients in the emergency department and more patient admissions. Clinically relevant advanced interventions have helped increase patient admissions and retain patients with long-term treatment management.
Better Patient Outcomes
The use of AI in healthcare has helped improve patient outcomes when receiving treatments. For example: it has decreased the length of stay for intracranial haemorrhage and pulmonary embolism patients, and the time to admission. It has also significantly enhanced disease awareness and resource efficiencies, supporting patient retention while maximizing patient care opportunities.
The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
Personalized Healthcare Services
The healthcare industry is adopting the use of AI to create personalized healthcare treatments. AI has vast amounts of healthcare data and also generates more through wearable technology which will be used to create customized treatments for patients.
When patients use wearable, they receive useful information about their heart rates, blood pressure, and calories burnt. This helps healthcare providers deliver personalized diet and exercise plans when all this data is collected in AI-enabled apps.
Diagnosis of Chronic Diseases
The future of AI in healthcare has shown immense potential for diagnosing chronic diseases and evaluating the progression of a specific disease with the use of important data insights. This will also help create an optimum decision-making framework for developing a specific treatment while providing a low-cost treatment.
In Conclusion
With many issues to overcome in the healthcare industry, the need for new innovative solutions such as artificial intelligence is clear. AI-powered solutions are already dealing with many key issues but still have a long way to go.
Unify Medicraft is the ultimate medical billing software for your healthcare practice. Our software fulfils all HIPAA requirements and offers a full range of solutions that can be easily integrated with your existing system. Let us help you shape the future of medical billing and increase your revenue cycle.