A wide range of medical technologies now use artificial intelligence, providing numerous benefits to both patients and healthcare professionals. This ebook looks at how AI is transforming many aspects of healthcare.

From the ebook:

A lot of digital health companies build dashboards for doctors to share data from a device or an app. The entrepreneurs often see this as an important product feature; in reality, most doctors have no time or interest in yet another source of patient information.

Doctors and nurses are already drowning in information. The problem is not a lack of information but knowing how to best use it. Doctors and nurses need technology platforms that make it easier to analyze health data and make treatment decisions.

This is the real role for artificial intelligence in healthcare: helping doctors and nurses make decisions. As two Babson College professors write on NEJM Catalyst, AI in healthcare is about augmentation not automation.

Two startups—Arterys and Astarte Medical—are taking this approach to AI, specifically machine learning. Each company is focusing on a different slice of the information overload problem and aiming to “reduce the cognitive workload” for doctors and improve care for patients.

How Arterys is analyzing medical images for patterns
Healthcare systems have extensive libraries of X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, and PET scans. Researchers are using these scans to train algorithms to identify skin spots that may be melanoma or nodules in lungs that could be cancer. This analysis of thousands of scans can find patterns that humans miss.

The idea is to have the algorithm do the first pass on the multiple images generated from one scan. The next step is to look for patterns identified in the larger analysis in an individual’s records. The deep learning platform then makes a recommendation to the doctor about what to review more closely or what treatment to consider.