We live in the trenches of growing Artificial Intelligence which is associated with special powers so that the doctors who embrace AI can onlook their healing powers expanding or magnifying more than they have in a hundred years. AI is a freaking female flower whose pollens are showered everywhere by the brisk wind. Yeah! The roots and shoots of AI have sprouted in every field adding on to its existing beauty and vibes. Now, fields without AI are endangered and the word ‘AI’ is no more a jargon.
The field of AI has got no bounds. AI is changing the game and saving lives with its applications in the decision, support, image analysis, and patient triage. Also, these are evolved with no intention of replacing clinicians and their judgments. AI always aims to aid physicians in making smart decisions at the point of care, taking the hassle and uncertainty out of viewing patient scans, and cutting down physician burnout. Both telemedicine and virtual medical assistants are helping us reach better heights .
What Exactly is Telemedicine ?
Nature has always been a best teacher.The world is proving to us that we don’t have to go to schools to learn. The same thing goes with treatments. If the doctor can reach your door-front, why waiting at the clinics, taking tokens and forming queues? Telemedicine doesn’t care about the geolocations of the sick and cuter. It aids a patient to get connected to the best surgeon or his favorite doctor who is miles apart. For a doctor to know the nature of an illness, he doesn’t have to be affected by it. If he could get an in-depth analysis of the patient, his real-time scan reports, and medical history all poured out at a glance, it makes him easy to solve the case and find the cure. So this is called telemedicine. It brings forward the era of virtual surgeries. Just like taking a plane ticket to go to Australia rather than marrying someone there, with telemedicine, we get treated by an American doctor without even going there.
The art of AI has become part of the new frontier in medicine. A few years back, it helped the doctor predict cardiovascular risk factors from retinal fundus photographs. AI could do this because it was able to dive into that deep blue sea and analyze all the pitfalls and risks for diseases in a way far better and faster than human doctors. If we give an optimistic sight to it, we can find that AI is for help and not destruction. Humans are lazy but consider themselves as superheroes. But AI is the real cheetahs that could analyze every pattern rapidly and produce proper diagnosis.AI can be of help before a doctor come into action. It’s a great breakthrough if the AI system could scan the X-ray report and diagnose a patient of pneumonia. This secures double bacon, one of the patients as he gets faster cure and the other for the doctor as he can provide swift treatment.
Nowadays, machine learning and deep learning algorithms are widely used for brain tumor detection, identifying skin cancers like melanoma, etc. as it has got that best chance of identifying those atypical features that are invisible to the naked eyes.To get better insights on cancer detection and classification using machine learning refer the link: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ml-cancer-cell-classification-using-scikit-learn/
Another example is where the doctor has to check for breast cancer. He or she has to observe each cell under the microscope one by one. But using AI, which has got 1,000,000 bright eyes, the duty is speedened. AI therefore makes that good doctor a better doctor. Refer this link for more information https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ml-kaggle-breast-cancer-wisconsin-diagnosis-using-knn/
There are people who think they are strong and bold, but fear a needle sting. Now, recent studies have brought into action, glucose level monitoring using AI, without pricking our fingers and taking out the blood. This is done using the ECG signal recording. Testing glucose levels are painful for patients and especially children and AI help detect when blood sugar levels fall below normal. Countries like China are using AI-enabled technologies at their hospitals to cure COVID positive patients. The availability of quantum computers has enabled faster access to medicines with lower side effects and contactless treatments under the best physicians available. AI has now become simpler as a computer calling us to make an appointment. Certain things AI is gonna take over and do well, other things will be in the purview of physician.
Natural language processing has also developed a lot and almost all the hospital websites are studded with chatbots that are ready to answer the queries. But implementing those costs a lot of money, waste a lot of time as a voicemail will never be a human, and more often it leaves many questions unanswered than answered. And when everything is automated and made online, it’s confusing to many leads in navigating the whole websites. Even electronic health records are there to help patients and doctors. They help in delivering personalized healthcare, reducing billing mistakes, and much more. The confidentiality of each patient is maintained by using many physical, administrative, and technical safeguards.Gaining enough trust is another major concern.Even though some ethical issues or breaches occur, the physician would be ultimately responsible.
- The foremost thing is that the doctor must learn to use these technology at its full potency.The doctors can always lie to a patient if it’s for boosting the patients’ hope for life. But if machines are to replace that role, everything is shot at once impulsively. And to act by understanding human emotions, they have to be programmed with much better machine learning principles. So in these cases, doctors always dislike such an assistant. But if the doctors think in a way that these virtual medical assistants are like the part-time employees who listens to his quarrels, the one that doesn’t get tired soon, then it would surely help increase their workplace productivity. The doctors can find time to treat more patients and as these machines are cost-effective, it gives a good return of the investments.
- And next ,the patient may find it apprehensive being treated by a machine.Even the minute medical information is shared by those voicemails and chatbots that would make them uneasy and dread at times. That discomfort must be bridged. An examination of the existing virtual communities has to be conducted to check for its reliability. Once proved before eyes, the patients will no longer develop those ill-feelings.This will help promote collective healthcare activities under a trustful shelter.
The road may be bumpy. But the future surely is blissful. As AI is actively fulfilling the entrusted duties, now it’s our turn as engineers to redraw the future and boundary of medicine. So, what are you waiting for?
