Technology has had a huge impact on the healthcare industry, making it easier to diagnose, treat, and care for patients. Artificial intelligence (AI) in particular is becoming more popular and is being used in innovative solutions with benefits for patients, providers, payers, and health tech companies. Here are 6 ways AI is impacting healthcare.
1. Accelerating drug discovery and development
Creating new medications or finding new uses for existing medications is important for making sure people have treatment options for their illnesses. However, drug discovery can be a long and expensive part of drug development. Fortunately, AI can be used to find new drug applications and help design new drugs. AI can analyze data about existing drugs and predict how they might work against various diseases. This makes it possible to repurpose existing drugs instead of creating new ones, allowing pharmaceutical companies to save time and money. AI can also be used when creating new drugs to better understand how effective they are likely to be.
2. Improving clinical decision making
Having more data can help people make more informed decisions. However, it must be easy to draw actionable insights from this data. That’s where AI comes in. AI can analyze a vast amount of data from different sources, then generate predictions and valuable insights that can assist clinical decision-making. AI analyzes healthcare data and identifies risks faster than humans can, allowing healthcare providers to gain insights faster so they can treat patients sooner. With AI, providers can access insights in real-time or near real-time as well as see a more holistic view of a patient or a population’s health. AI is also more accurate, helping to reduce diagnostic errors.
At Lumiata, we use AI to provide healthcare professionals with actionable insights they can use to improve clinical decision-making. Our solutions draw from healthcare data, clinical IP, and medical knowledge, including 100 million patient records, 35 thousand physician curation hours, and 50 million published articles, so you can feel confident you’re making well-informed decisions.
3. Assisting in early disease detection
Early disease detection is crucial for achieving the best possible outcomes for patients. The earlier healthcare providers can detect disease, the earlier they can treat it, and the more likely they are to keep patients healthy. AI is supporting early disease detection by predicting disease onset and progression. Lumiata, for example, can predict the onset or progression of more than 130 acute and chronic diseases within the next 12 months. We can also predict why disease will start. Using these insights, providers can intervene sooner and provide patients with personalized care to help prevent disease onset or keep diseases from becoming severe. Lumiata can also predict disease onset or progression for your entire book of business in minutes, making AI a fast and convenient resource for early disease detection.
4. Increasing healthcare accessibility
AI is making healthcare more accessible, affordable, and equitable. Access to quality healthcare has long been different depending on a person’s geographic location and socioeconomic status. Urban areas, for example, typically have more healthcare facilities than rural areas, making it easier for people in urban areas to access quality care. However, AI is making healthcare more accessible to everyone. With the rise in the popularity of telehealth, people can now choose from in-person or virtual care. Telehealth gives people access to quality care regardless of the day, time, or a person’s distance from a physical healthcare facility. Providers can also use virtual chatbots to answer basic health questions 24/7.
Telehealth and chatbot services can also be offered for free or for less than traditional in-person visits, making healthcare more affordable. Healthcare providers can also use AI to keep healthcare costs down by monitoring a patient’s vitals through wearable devices or using predictive analytics to prevent disease onset or progression. Once alerted to a patient’s risk factors, the provider can reach out to the patient via telehealth to address the issue before in-person care is needed. Intervening sooner to keep patients healthy also helps patients avoid the need for costly treatments and procedures.
To make healthcare more equitable, AI can reduce or remove bias through data transparency and help put an end to differences in healthcare outcomes based on ethnicity, race, or gender.
5. Improving medical imaging analysis
It takes time and effort to analyze medical images, but medical imaging analysis is important to the early detection of health conditions. AI is making it faster and easier to analyze these images and can alert healthcare professionals to health risks. For example, AI has been shown to be as effective as human radiologists at detecting signs of breast cancer. AI can also analyze the large amounts of images and data generated from clinical studies and detect patterns, including patterns that aren’t easy for humans to see. This gives medical imaging professionals greater clarity into the data so they can take informed action.
6. Making healthcare more personalized
A “one size fits all” approach to healthcare isn’t as effective as a personalized approach. Because different people have different genes, habits, and environmental factors, a treatment that works for one person may not work for the next. Healthcare based on a person’s specific risk factors is more likely to be effective, and AI can help providers offer precision medicine and healthcare. For example, AI can learn about patients and their preferences, then give providers customized recommendations. Lumiata’s AI can predict diseases based on a person’s unique risk factors and health history, enabling providers to address those specific concerns.
See how artificial intelligence can benefit your organization with Lumiata
At Lumiata, we’ve seen firsthand the positive impact AI can make in healthcare. Now, we’re ushering in a new era of groundbreaking predictive analytics for healthcare providers, payers, and health tech companies.
Think of us as your crystal ball – we predict the future of claims, claimants, and care, so you can achieve better outcomes for your patients, members, and company. Contact us to learn more and get a demo.