AI to Facilitate Digital Healthcare in 2021

AI-based telehealth, a new generation of affordable and accurate sensing devices that can be utilized to examine, monitor as well as diagnose patients remotely

Fremont, CA: In addition to efforts to create Covid-19 vaccines, 2020 has been a year of major developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, innovations that are implemented as never before in healthcare, resulting in previously unimaginable advancements and improvements in diagnosis and treatment.

These technologies are evolving at a growing pace, and in 2021 and beyond, AI might be used even more to solve healthcare challenges. Here are some of the key places where AI can be used in the immediate future to improve digital healthcare.

Oncology

Today, many healthcare procedures, like cancer diagnosis, still rely heavily on manual operations and processes, and even those that leverage digital technology use them on an independent basis, not under an essential environment. A good example is pathology, the medical discipline of diagnosing illness in patients, most commonly cancer.Traditional pathology requires manual procedures that have remained unchanged for years, where pathologists examine glass slides with tissue samples using microscopes.But that is changing now with a growing trend of moving toward digitized workflowsandinfrastructures. This trend is expected to boost as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, increasingly saving time and labor costs while providing better and more cost-efficient care.

Telehealth

The urgency for quality healthcare continues to growwith an aging population and ansurge in disease incidence. However, the number of physiciansdoes not grow at the same rate, and this presents a supply gap particularly evident for certain medical sub-specialties, in rural communities and even in urban centers. For example, AI-based telehealth, a new generation of affordable and accurate sensing devices that can be utilized to examine, monitor as well as diagnose patients remotely, and new communication technologies such as AI-based chatbots – would help make a visit to the doctor’s officea completely different experience, allowing for a more frequent, effective, and affordable physician access for patients. The pandemic, with its regional lockdownsandfrequent quarantines, only demonstrated the importance of these technologies and the shift required in the mindset of all stakeholders: physicians, patients, providers, and payers.