3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming the Healthcare Industry
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been taking on an increasingly important role in various industries over the last few years, and healthcare is no exception. In fact, the healthcare AI market could be worth more than $21 billion by 2026. Given the rapid progress of healthcare software development, it’s impossible to predict how healthcare providers will be leveraging the technology in five or ten years.
While providers are often slow to adopt new technologies—let alone implement them effectively—artificial intelligence has already had a dramatic impact on how healthcare organizations approach administration, diagnostics, drug development, and many other critical fields. In this article, we’ll cover a few key trends in AI for doctors, nurses, administrators, and other healthcare professionals to be aware of in 2021.
Drug Discovery
Hundreds of billions of dollars are poured into drug research and development every year, but conventional approaches are still surprisingly inefficient. Artificial intelligence systems are far more effective than humans when it comes to identifying trends in large volumes of data, and this is exactly why AI is such an important resource for drug discovery.
With Pfizer and other pharmaceutical giants already leveraging artificial intelligence, it’s clear that the technology will play a major role in drug development throughout the 2020s and beyond. That said, the field is still in the early stages of growth—we have just begun to explore the potential of AI-powered drug discovery.
Natural Language Processing
Creating, storing, accessing, and sharing patient case files come with significant administrative costs, and artificial intelligence is already changing how healthcare providers approach that information. Natural language processing enables AI solutions to search through and effectively interpret patient case files in a fraction of the time that a human would spend analyzing the same data. Manually evaluating case files to approve treatment plans may seem like an archaic practice in just a few years.
Diagnostics
Cutting-edge research is constantly finding new ways to utilize artificial intelligence for diagnostic purposes, and AI is already used to identify a number of conditions including pneumonia, breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, and meningitis. Healthcare organizations often collaborate with businesses in the artificial intelligence space who can help them develop solutions to match their needs. While these solutions may never completely replace medical professionals in the diagnostic process, early results have been extremely promising for the future of AI diagnostics.
Healthcare is continually adapting to emerging technologies, and artificial intelligence will likely be remembered as one of the most important developments of the 21st century. These are just a few of the countless ways in which AI is already having a visible effect on the healthcare industry.
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