The Rise of AI in Health Management
According to the research paper The Coming of Age of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Published online 2008 Sep 13. doi: 10.1016/j.artmed.2008.07.017:
“The earliest work in medical artificial intelligence (AI) dates to the early 1970s. Early AI in medicine (AIM) researchers had discovered the applicability of AI methods to life sciences, most visibly in the Dendral experiments of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which brought together computer scientists (e.g., Edward Feigenbaum), chemists (e.g., Carl Djerassi), geneticists (e.g., Joshua Lederberg), and philosophers of science (e.g., Bruce Buchanan) in collaborative work that demonstrated the ability to represent and utilize expert knowledge in symbolic form.”
When sci-fi set the trend
Ethics & Isaac Asimov
The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or known as Asimov's Laws) are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov.
+First Law
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
+Second Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
+Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
The Laws apply, as a matter of course, to every tool that human beings use", and "analogues of the Laws are implicit in the design of almost all tools, robotic or not":
Law 1: A tool must not be unsafe to use. Hammers have handles and screwdrivers have hilts to help increase grip…
Law 2: A tool must perform its function efficiently unless this would harm the user. This is the entire reason ground-fault circuit interrupters exist. Any running tool will have its power cut if a circuit senses that some current is not returning to the neutral wire, and hence might be flowing through the user...
Law 3: A tool must remain intact during its use unless its destruction is required for its use or for safety. For example, Dremel disks are designed to be as tough as possible without breaking unless the job requires it to be spent. Furthermore, they are designed to break at a point before the shrapnel velocity could seriously injure someone (other than the eyes, though safety glasses should always be worn anyway).
When movies depict AI as a tool to manage health
Robot & Frank
Frank Weld who lives alone and suffers from increasingly severe mental deterioration and dementia. Frank's son Hunter grows tired of making weekly visits to his father's home, but is reluctant to put his father into full-time care, so he purchases a robot companion, which is programmed to provide Frank with therapeutic care, including a fixed daily routine and cognition-enhancing activities like gardening.
Iron Man & F.R.I.D.A.Y
FRIDAY is an A.I created by Tony Stark, it impressed us by informing Tony of the injuries he sustained and warning him that Scott Lang had breached the suit before removing Ant-Man via fire retardant foam. When Rhodes was injured, she quickly contacted emergency medical personnel to assist him.
AI in the real world today
The researches are fruitful
A BCG analysis found that use of AI can reduce producers’ conversion costs by up to 20%, with up to 70% of the cost reduction resulting from higher workforce productivity.
Source: BCG
The vast majority of healthcare executives––89%––are experimenting with emerging technologies such as AI, according to Accenture’s Digital Health Technology Vision report. The findings of the report offer insights into how health execs are thinking about new innovations––and where the biggest impacts will be.
For the report, Accenture asked 221 health executives about their beliefs on emerging technologies known as “DARQ”—distributed ledger, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing.
More than two-thirds of execs said they believe DARQ will have a “transformational or extensive impact” on their healthcare organizations over the next three years. Out of the four technologies, AI was the clear winner in terms of which will have the biggest impact, with 44% citing it as their top pick.
The rapid rise of these technologies has also helped accelerate the pace of innovation for 94% of executives’ organizations over the past three years, according to the survey, which identified several trends about healthcare companies as they grow as digital businesses. The rise of DARQ power, as described by Accenture, is one of those trends.
Creating value: Human & AI
Rather than scrap traditional sources of competitive advantage, such as position and capability, AI reframes them. To be clear, humans will not become obsolete, even if there will be dislocations like (but arguably more rapid than) those during the Industrial Revolution. First, you need people to build the systems.
Uber, for instance, has hired hundreds of self-driving vehicle experts, about 50 of whom are from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. And AI experts are the most in-demand hires on Wall Street. Second, humans can provide the common sense, social skills, and intuition that machines currently lack. Even if routine tasks are delegated to computers, people will stay in the loop for a long time to ensure quality.
A healthcare provider in Hamilton, Ontario, recently received the first robot approved for knee surgeries and will start using it on patients in January 2019. The Mako Rio makes a 3D model of the procedure based on the patient’s CT scan and provides real-time feedback as the surgeons use specialty instruments. The hospital also hopes to use the surgical robot for hip replacements. Operations on the hips and needs require surgeons to carefully place implants inside the patients to help them eventually regain mobility. The 3D modeling component also allows surgeons to plan each stage of the surgery before it happens. This could help them review approaches in it more ways than they could otherwise.
Source: BCG
AI’s competitive advantage in Healthcare: Data as the key ingredient.
“When healthcare organizations gain the ability to create one-to-one relationships with individual healthcare consumers, they become each individual person’s ongoing, trusted healthcare partner,” the report reads. Undoubtedly, there is a great opportunity for technologies to meet the needs of healthcare patients, and 87% of execs said they believe digital demographics give their organization a new way to identify market opportunities for these unmet needs, while 86% believe digital demographics, versus traditional demographics, are more powerful in understanding customers.
However, today there is a gap in how consumers think healthcare should be delivered and the way it actually is done. For one, people want privacy. Some technology interventions that are meant to prompt the best health options can actually seem intrusive. Healthcare organizations therefore have to walk the line of being “useful” and “creepy,” which can vary from person to person. This means that sometimes consumers will want their healthcare providers to use technology in their lives––and times when they don’t.
“Like other aspects of their daily lives, consumers increasingly expect technology to enable health organizations to meet them when, how and where they want care,” Kaveh Safavi, MD, JD, senior managing director of Accenture’s health practice, said in a statement. "Despite considerable effort to-date, there remains a long journey ahead to deliver the rich, individualized, experience-based relationships that modern patients demand.
At last…
Shantanu Nundy, the Director of the Human Diagnosis Project Nonprofit, told Futurism that, when it comes to developing technology in any industry, the AI should be seamlessly integrated into its function.
“You have to design these things with an end user in mind. People use Netflix, but it’s not like ‘AI for watching movies,’ right? People use Amazon, but it’s not like ‘AI for shopping.”
In other words, if the tech is designed well and implemented in a way that people find useful, people don’t even realise they’re using AI at all.
Sources:
The Coming of Age of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Published online 2008 Sep 13. doi: 10.1016/j.artmed.2008.07.017
"Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D."
https://www.bcg.com/publications/collections/strategy-digital-artificial-intelligence-business.aspx
