Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Health Sector

Gayani Anuradha Edirisinghe
2 min readSep 13, 2021
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Artificial Intelligence has become one of the special turning points in Technology. As we all know, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a broad computer science industry dedicated to developing intelligent computers and devices able to do activities that usually need human intelligence. In many elements of patient care and administrative procedures, it is possible to help healthcare providers through the application of artificial intelligence in health care. Most IAs and health technology are important in the field of health care, although they may differ greatly in methods.

AI offers a variety of benefits in comparison to traditional analytics and clinical decision-making. Learning algorithms can be more accurate and exact when interacting with training data, allowing people to obtain new insight into diagnosis, treatment procedures, variability in therapy, and patient results.

The use of computers to communicate is not an entirely new notion. It is a modern field of study that can offer substantial applications for some patients to create direct connections between the technique and the human mind without the need for keys, mouse, and monitors.

Nowadays AI has been used in many areas of the Helth sector. The following are some examples of applications of AI in the Health sector.

  1. Diseases diagnosis devices
  2. Robotic Surgeries
  3. Virtual Nursing Assistant
  4. Online chatbots to give medical advice
  5. Cancer cells detection
  6. Heart Disease detection

While AI is being used in many applications in the health sector, it has some threats and risks as well.

  1. Injuries and mistakes that can happen — The risk is most evident, and patient harm or other health concerns may arise, because AI systems occasionally are incorrect.
  2. Privacy Issues — The need for huge datasets offers developers incentives for collecting such data from numerous patients.
  3. Availability of training data for AI algorithms — Training AI systems require huge volumes of information from sources such as electronic health records, pharmaceutical documents, records of insurance claims, or consumer data such as activity trackers and shopping histories.
  4. Professional Realignment — Certain medical disciplines, such as radiology, can significantly change the volume of their work.
  5. Loss of Job opportunities — Replacement of people with AI technologies can lead to the loss of job opportunities in every level of the Health sector.

The biggest issue for IA in medical care is not whether the technologies are sufficiently helpful, but if they are used in regular clinical practice. In time physicians might move into work that demands the greatest levels of cognitive function and unique human capabilities. Maybe those that refuse to engage with it will be the only healthcare professionals who lose the full potential of AI to healthcare.

Hope you have gained some idea about AI in Health Sector by reading my article. Thanks for Reading!

--

--

Gayani Anuradha Edirisinghe

Computer Systems Engineer | AI and Machine Learning Researcher| Research Assistant at SLIIT — Department of Computer Systems Engineering | Sri Lanka