AI and Health Care - Part I (Diagnosis)

Unffornatelly, in the past months, the humankind is facing one of the worst pandemic cases of history (COVID-19). I want to begin by thanking each and everyone that are, were and will help our people. Not only the health professionals but also all the people helping each other, even just by staying at home, as we must be. 

Human cancer cells

This situation made us stop. Stop not only because we are at home, but also stop to think about this madness. We and our loved ones are in danger. Moreover, we do not know when it will be over, it is a new virus with new behaviours and no medicines available so far. This is terrifying.

Well, I started thinking about how AI could help us with this pandemic and how AI is nowadays being used to help the health systems across all countries. I did a little research and I am presenting to you an overview of what being done with AI. Furthermore, I will give to you some hints of what is being thought of to be done in the future.

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The AI's use for medical purposes is not the replacement of humans by machines and sending everyone into unemployment. Instead, AI  gives the professionals a faster and more reliable solution to make a better diagnosis and give better, and in time treatments to a patient. We can also use AI to build new methods of creating, or just creating, medicines, vaccines, and more work tools. Thus, AI is just a tool to, let's say, a bigger purpose. 
One of the most causes of death in our world is cancer. Therefore, AI experts started to use algorithms capable of detecting cancer more quickly than trained pathologists.  For instance, we have the PathAI company that developed an AI system to assists the medical professionals by finding the cancer cells more quickly and accurately. Thereby, we can diagnose cancer soon enough to give the best way of living to each patient. 

Pathologist

Another company working against cancer is Freenome. There they develop systems to implement AI in the overall exams to detect cancer in its early stages. Once again, AI is used to have more timely treatments.

Chatbot

Another AI application in health systems is Buoy Health. This system is based on a chatbot. You talk to it about your symptoms and the bot will guide you finding the best health care based on its diagnosis. Harvard Medical School is one of the many hospitals using it in the diagnosing phase, resulting in a faster response to the patients.

Radiology

Enlitic works with AI systems that support the radiologists to get better insights into what is going on with the patient. Their algorithms are based on Deep Learning techniques trained with radiology images, patients medical history, and so on. This allows practically real-time diagnosis and, consequently, in time treatment. On the radiology field, we also have Zebra Medical Vision with its AI systems that evaluate the radiology scan to find several potential diseases. The radiologist uses the system reports, thus, they have a base to rely on, when in the diagnosis phase.

As you can see, there are already lots of investments to use AI in our health systems. AI is actively proving to be a powerful and beneficial tool in this fight against the diseases since the detection phase.
What do you reckon about using AI on these stages? Please, let me know in the comments.