With continuous advancements in artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, concerns and questions about AI usage have risen to the surface once again.
This is no exception for the healthcare industry, where efficiency and safeguards continue to outbalance one another.
AI is no modern concept in healthcare. In fact, artificial intelligence applications have been in the field since the 1970s. With its first implications of solving “simple” biomedical problems to electronic data collection and aiding in surgery in the 80s and 90s, AI has now been deep-rooted in the study of medicine. As a matter of fact, various current medical specialties rely heavily on AI technology and machines, including but not limited to radiology, telemedicine, and disease diagnosis.
The use of intelligence retrieval can be categorized into different areas of diagnosis, documentation, research and development, and efficiency monitoring. The most conventional use of AI is diagnosing patients. With the help of AI algorithms, the analysis of medical imaging data (X-rays, MRIs, etc.) has become less time-consuming. Even though the accuracy of artificial intelligence is continuously up for debate, the sheer amount of information experts need to process is nearly impossible. Therefore, having systematically programmed examinations considerably speeds up healthcare processes.
With the switch from paper documentation to electronic health records, clinical data has become more interactive, long-lasting, and accurate. Especially with plausible human errors in the recording process, technology such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has been employed to make documents more efficient and precise. This is important because practitioners can have more time to focus on the patient's actual needs rather than wasting time and effort merely typing things up. AI's work in healthcare administration, such as scheduling and billing, has created more organized data systems.
Some say that artificial intelligence's limitation or “safeguard” (for humans, at least) is that it will never replace human creativity since it works solely off algorithms. However, according to Michael Pazzani, Ph.D., principal scientist at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, “AI’s applications are as wide-ranging as the human imagination.” This becomes significant in drug development and research. Another significant field of study, precision medicine, is an area in which treatment procedures and their outcomes are predicted based on the patient's conditions. With the AI’s ability to inspect vast datasets, identifying potential drugs and their efficiencies becomes easier.
The challenges with artificial intelligence are no doubt in patient security (both with data privacy and health). As accurate as AI becomes, since algorithms are the only way they are run, ensuring that their compliances are truly precise is something that may take endless research and development. Even if the machine runs according to the algorithm, things may become complicated if the algorithm isn’t actually answering the problem at hand. Even more, with the amount of data that AI systems process, there could be possible cases of misuse of personal information.
Yet, with continuous efforts “to improve patient outcomes, increase safety, reduce human error, and reduce costs associated with healthcare,” the future is bright for artificial intelligence in the medical field. AI is still far from taking over unique human skills and the “highest level of cognitive function.” Therefore, the complete takeover of artificial intelligence in healthcare and other fields is not of distant trouble. The real concern may be whether medical professionals conform to adopting AI use in daily clinical practice or stay away completely. Whatever one’s perspective is, human-AI collaboration is something to keep in mind.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.