Artificial Intelligence: A gift for healthcare – Times of India

The objective of technological advancement is to improve the quality of human life – and for this, it is artificial intelligence which is playing a great role for every aspect of human life. One of the critical fields in this regard is good health care, which is progressing by leaps and bounds due to the advancement in artificial intelligence.

From diagnosis to treatment, from prevention to therapeutics, artificial intelligence has made many things possible which had been absolutely unachievable before. Artificial intelligence, if broadly categorised, can be known for its two major objectives: Prediction or forecasting, and identification or decision making –both of which have been the major tasks which a medical expert carries out for a patient.

Prediction of a disease in the early stages is a boon for a patient as it gives the time to cure the disease. Recent research from the University of Texas suggested that the prediction of disease is possible just by historical health records using natural language processing. Early prediction of a disease – whether a brain disorder or diabetes or highly dangerous cancer – is possible by applying artificial intelligence to gene data, or diagnostic medical imaging/signals, or, as mentioned, just by electronic health records.

The second aspect – identification – for instance, of the malignancy of a brain tumor just by looking at the MRI image, goes even beyond finding out whether a tumour is malignant or not, because artificial intelligent algorithms are capable of detecting even the type of cancer in it. Nowadays, artificial intelligent systems can detect heart disease, brain disease, genetic disease, cellular disease, etc, by processing only electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, MRI, PET, gene expression data or CT scan without any invitro examinations.

Artificial intelligence is also providing better healthcare experience in the form of smart devices. Used with Internet of Things, artificial intelligence is now making human life better with compact and mobile devices. These devices are able to track basic human body vitals for a serious disease like Alzheimer’s, for instance, and are also capable of providing the appropriate therapy for different brain disorders.

Moving one step further, the explainable artificial intelligence even comes with an explanation with its decision for its acceptance. Dr Shinjini Kundu at John Hopkins Hospital, USA, had pointed out in the journal ‘Nature Medicine’ that artificial intelligence should be explainable in the field of medicine. Explainable AI is gaining trust among researchers, and it can be expected that in the coming time, your smart device will be able to tell you the future risk on your health with a proper explanation.


(The author is Assistant Professor, School of Computer Science Engineering and Technology, Bennett University)