Nural Research - Healthcare

Last updated 29 Nov 2020

Healthcare is a prime recipient for AI intervention due to the abundance of data that is collected, almost a 1500% increase over the past seven years^[1], and the ability to set well defined, objective goals.

5 Interesting uses

1

Diagnosis
There are huge strides in the field of diagnosis and IBM's Watson for Health and Google DeepMind health are major drivers in this area. In cancer diagnosis, studies have found AI systems that achieved a breast cancer detection accuracy comparable to an average breast radiologist.^[3] Machine learning and systems neuroscience are also being combined to build algorithms into neural networks that mimic the human brain.^[2]

2

Consumer Health Applications
By utilising medical IoT devices to gather healthcare data and AI-based apps to process the gathered information adjustments can be offered to the current lifestyle of a patient. Many companies have emerged in this space including Lifelight and Perfexia health.

3

Drug Development
AI has revolutionised the pharma industry ranging from drug discovery to product management. Check out the figure below!

4

Personalised Medicine and Healthcare
With the onset of genome sequencing alongside wearable IoT devices, personalised healthcare can really become a reality. However, there is a huge amount of data required to bring this about and this is where AI comes to play. For example, clustering algorithms can create drug recommendations based on similar patients who responded well to the treatment plan.

5

Patient monitoring and care
Once again the use of wearable IoTs and other remote monitoring tools allow for a constant stream of data which can be input into an AI system to predict conditions before they manifest. One company iRhythm utilises data from its remote monitoring devices to predict heart conditions before they occur.