How AI Technology Can Help Cope with Healthcare Problems

As the world’s population continues to age, the global healthcare industry is preparing to deal with unprecedented pressure.

Luckily, emerging technologies powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are helping providers meet the rising demand – while also empowering patients to become more accountable for their own health.

Thanks to its ability to deliver more accurate, reliable, and connected data, AI is radically transforming the global healthcare sector, turning it into a well-oiled system able to deliver quality care and cope with an always-growing demand.

Here’s how.

Creating Ad Hoc Insurance Policies and Making Healthcare More Accessible

While health insurance policies are designed to make healthcare more accessible, most American households are still not immune to the financial burden related to health treatments and care costs. What’s more, nearly 50% of US adults find themselves delaying or skipping medical care because of high out-of-pocket costs.

AI-powered tools are helping insurance providers limit costs by determining the real risks involved with every single patient, based on historical and medical data.

Thanks to these insights, providers can craft AI-driven insurance policies, which are delivered virtually through a dedicated Health Platform and are designed to meet each patient’s medical and financial needs.

Managing Patient Risk

Today, healthcare providers use documents such as health records to determine the risk of individuals developing and suffering from chronic disease. However, as the population continues to age and the prevalence of chronic conditions increases, AI can offer a more comprehensive approach and assist providers in managing each patient’s risk.

What’s more, AI-powered technologies can help chronically ill individuals and seniors deal with their long-term conditions by helping them comply with long-term treatment programs.

Prevention and Lightening the Burden on Healthcare

Combined with the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and gamification, AI is already proving its incredible potential to help patients become more accountable for their own health.

Thanks to wearable devices and consumer health applications, patients can monitor important indicators like weight, BMI, heart rate, stress, and oxygen level and just their routine to keep healthy.

In turn, this encourages healthier behaviours and reduces the risk of chronic diseases – including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular issues.

From the healthcare providers’ point of view, these technologies are essential to better understand the consumer’s behaviour, patterns, and lifestyle.

Ultimately, the data deriving wearable technologies can be used to predict heat-related illnesses, track fertility cycles, identify the need for mental health interventions, and help healthcare providers deliver efficient treatments.

Beyond all these benefits, health-promoting technologies can reduce the need for care, thus reducing the overall burden deriving from today’s aging population.

Training Healthcare Providers

AI is making its way through the landscape of healthcare training, transforming the way healthcare professionals develop their skills and preparing the next generation of providers.

Technologies like the Osso VR surgical training allow trainees to hone their skills in all safety through the use of much more sophisticated algorithms, which can tap into a wide database of real-life scenarios and create challenges adequate to the trainee’s abilities.

Supporting Early Detection and More Accurate Diagnosis

Every year, around 12 million Americans – or 5% of those seeking outpatient medical care – receive an incorrect diagnosis of their condition. But, even more importantly, nearly 30% of diagnostic errors were life-threatening, leading to the patient’s death or a long-term disability.

While it’s undeniable that the diagnostic process remains one of the most challenging aspects of healthcare, AI is revolutionizing the entire disease screening process, making diagnoses more accurate and enabling the detection of health conditions at their early stages.

In turn, this translates to increased chances of recovery for the patient and limited investment of resources for providers, while also reducing the need for unnecessary medical treatments like biopsies.

Assisting in Clinical Decision Making and Care Delivery

While today, triage nurses, doctors, and surgeons find themselves in the position to make potentially life-changing decisions, a great percentage of the human error involved in this process might be minimized through AI.

For example, current triage processes showed an accuracy of just over 55%, with nearly 25% of cases assigned to less severe levels. AI can help healthcare providers leverage easy-to-interpret predictive analytics, demographic patterns, and big data to make their clinical-decision making process more accurate.

While AI can still be considered a technology in its infancy, it has already proven its transformative potential in the global healthcare industry and secured its role as an essential tool to cope with today’s problems and tomorrow’s increased demand for quality care.