Artificial Intelligence and Clinical Decision-making
Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that endeavors to analyze complex data with a goal of facilitating decision making. Artificial intelligence has had a great role in the development of healthcare. It has been integrated with the larger health care sector assisting in making decisions to improve on the performance of human care providers (Szolovits 65). A. I in healthcare has been essential in facilitating practitioners to make decisions based on insights from past data. The following paper seeks to discuss various avenues in which artificial intelligence has been actively been used in the medical sector. It further explores ways in which the use of artificial intelligence can help in improving the efficiency of healthcare services.
Artificial intelligence assists in expanding, sharpening and improving the ability of doctors to undertake an activity. The use of A.I is not aimed at pitching the human mind against robots, but improving the efficiency of the process of decision making (Patel et al 10). The use of A.I in medicine dates back to the 1970s. The early use of A.I involved the cooperation of chemists, philosopher’s computer scientists and geneticists. The collaboration led to the development of groundbreaking inventions that would lay the foundation for the development of artificial intelligence in medicine (Acampora 2480). Biomedical informatics gained the most interest among scholars due to its large influence on the healthcare sector. The use of artificial intelligence in medicine has been advocated due to its huge advantage over traditional analytics techniques (Lukowicz 96). It has facilitated better clinical decision-making process as clinicians and healthcare professionals have enough data to make clear and concise decisions.
The use of brain-computer interfaces had drastically improved the quality of life of patients suffering from strokes and locked in syndromes. It has further been extensively used for patients with spinal cord injuries (Jiang et al., 232). The brain-computer interface combines artificial intelligence to decode neural activities related to hand movement. This further helps an individual to experience and communicate like a healthy person.
The use of artificial intelligence is also bound to improve the quality of data obtained from radiology tools. It’s key to note that radiological images still depends on the diagnostic analysis of physical tissues to obtained biopsies (Nealon and Moreno 10). There is room for the use of artificial intelligence in the improvement of images as obtained from radiological tools. This will take away the need for the use of physical samples obtained from an individual (Ashrafian, Darzi, and Athanasiou 40). Artificial intelligence will enable clinicians to be able to harness image-based algorithms to identify phenotypes and genetic properties. The expansive use of artificial intelligence will enable hospitals suffering from inadequate staff to maximize on other diagnostic activities. This will mitigate the shortage of qualified staffs since most diagnostic duties will be taken over by artificial intelligence (Ramesh et al. 334). The uses of A.I have been proven to have a high accuracy that is comparable to a human in some instances.
Clinical documentation is an essential field in which artificial intelligence has been used successfully over the year starting with electronic health records. The clinical documentations such electronic health record is one of the avenues in which the medicine field adopted the use of artificial intelligence. The record possesses the ability to contain all the physical and physiological attributes of patients (Machado et al 438). This includes their past medical history as well as illnesses. This is a field that can be expanded through the inculcation of voice recognition dictation which will enhance the clinical documentation process. Some have even suggested the inclusions of video recordings in clinical documentation.
Brain-Computer Interfaces and Improved Quality of Life
The recorded videos will be essential in the future after they have been indexed for future information retrieval. The expansive use of virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Siri in homes provides the potential of having the virtual assistants in hospitals. This will prove to be significant as they will improve the accuracy of care offered to patients in hospitals. There has been an increasing shortage of nurses in hospitals as a result of the rise in patient visiting hospitals (Sutikno et al 201). The virtual medical assistant would have a huge advantage over humans as they have relatively better efficiency and accuracy. They would not have impaired judgment as a result of increased fatigue.
Drug resistance is a serious menace facing the healthcare sector. It arises when there is an overuse of critical drugs which leads to the evolution of superbugs which do not respond to treatments. This poses a threat to the whole population as the superbugs are transmitted to other parts of the population as drug-resistant superbugs, therefore, increasing the level of resistance in the population. Scientists have recognized the need for the use of artificial intelligence in securing the records of patients. The use of electronic records helps in clear identification of patients with past infections and their level of risks (Lu et al. 370). This will be essential in halting the spread of superbugs. Scientists will leverage on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the analytics which enhances the level of care, speed, and accuracy of services provided. Artificial intelligence will, therefore, assist in improving the level of infection control and antibiotic resistance by utilizing the large data collected from patients. This will save a lot of funds used in disease prevention throughout the world.
Hospitals generate a huge amount of data every day from a large number of patients who visit them. It is essential for the clinicians to think of ways in which the data generated from patients can be used to predict infections or track the spread of infectious diseases. This will be possible through the use of artificial intelligence. For example, pathologists serve as the most significant clinician in the healthcare sector. They are the source of the most significant data in a hospital. Over 70% of decisions made in a healthcare facility are dependent on data collected by pathologists (Yang and Veltri 76). Improving the accuracy of pathologist will have huge significance in the quality of healthcare services offer by hospitals. There exist a huge opportunity for the inclusion of artificial intelligence in pathology. Some of the avenues that would improve the quality of diagnosis include the ability of artificial intelligence tools to improve on the digital image processing. This will improve the ability of a healthcare professional to make decisions based on the available data. Artificial intelligence will assist in the improvement of productivity by healthcare professionals. The use of artificial intelligence enhances the quality of service by capturing elements in a diagnosis that may escape the human eye (Machado et al 438). This reduces the amount of time spent on a diagnosis, therefore, improving the productivity of the clinicians.
Artificial Intelligence and Radiology Tools
The use of smart devices also provides an opportunity for the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. The technological advancement in smart devices such as real-time CCTV, driverless cars, distraction sensor in cars are just a few of the examples the active use of artificial intelligence. It’s evident that there exist some smart devices in the healthcare currently such as the ICU Monitors. Some hospitals are using micro cameras to study the inside of the body with the need for surgery (Nealon and Moreno 10). This provides an avenue where hospitals can improve their diagnosis and reduce their costs significantly by adopting the use of artificial intelligence. This has led to the growth of the telehealth subsector which involves the process of monitoring patients using artificial intelligence. Wearable devices have been invented that are able to constantly monitor an individual’s health and notice any physiological changes.
The increased use of artificial intelligence increasingly raises ethical questions in the healthcare sector. Some opponent of its use cites the introduction of new risks to patients. They argue that the complete reliance on artificial intelligence eliminates the sense of responsibility and accountability that exist among healthcare professionals. The vulnerability of artificial intelligence to malicious attacks is also cited as another disadvantage of relying on their usage in hospitals (Ramesh et al. 334). The reliance on machines and devices for diagnosis further raise the questions of their accuracy and the level of failure. It is evident that machines may fail despite their high level of accuracy (Machado et al 438). Opponents of artificial intelligence claim that single fails in the use of artificial intelligence could be catastrophic compared to human fails.
In conclusion, the use of artificial intelligence in the healthcare has been a success. It has generally improved the productivity of healthcare professionals by increasing the accuracy of their diagnoses. This has facilitated the improvement in the quality of service offered by hospitals. The inventions of smart devices for use in and out of the hospital are a great advancement in the monitoring of the disease. Wearable devices have improved the ability of clinicians to monitor their patients away from the vicinity of the hospitals. This has enabled them to recommend the appropriate treatment for their patients. The use of artificial intelligence has not been without controversies as opponents have questioned its accuracy. They have sought to dissuade its reliance in healthcare facilities due to its lack of accountability its vulnerability to attack.
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