Faster, smarter, kinder: How AI can help revolutionize the patient experience
By Laura Velásquez Herrera,
President and Co-Founder of Arkangel AI
LinkedIn
With its roots in compassion and humanity, the healthcare sector might seem an unlikely place for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a big role. Yet as we look deeper into the complex processes that build our medical systems, we uncover a multitude of ways that AI could revolutionize patient care for better diagnoses.
This technology is already impacting healthcare in powerful ways. AI is supporting the detection of conditions like heart disease, rare diseases and cancer. But it is also streamlining administrative tasks like writing summaries and notes, freeing doctors from the burden of paperwork. This empowers them to spend more time and energy on what matters most: their patients.
As we continue to adopt and develop AI in healthcare, it is crucial we keep patients at the core of everything we do. When we co-founded Arkangel AI, an AI-powered platform focused on enhancing healthcare services, we were driven to empower providers to keep the human element at the forefront of their industry. With the unprecedented power of AI at our fingertips, we have a responsibility to create scalable solutions that meaningfully address global health challenges. We can’t fall into the trap of creating technology for technology’s sake. For instance, a cancer prediction algorithm is only truly impactful if it’s accessible to people and patients worldwide. To fully realize AI’s benefits, we must not only develop technology, but ensure it’s widely available.
Barriers to AI in healthcare
In our experience, there are three major barriers that prevent AI from reaching its full potential in the healthcare sector.
The first is that most healthcare practitioners are not well versed in the ins and outs of technology and data management. There is a significant need for education around what technology is used for. Their expertise and focus is rightfully centred on the patients in front of them. AI experts need to work with decision-makers and practitioners themselves to help them understand how and where AI can help them, and build supportive infrastructure allowing them to use tools effectively, without impacting the time and energy they have for patients.
The second point is the lack of understanding of the actual problems that need to be solved. Without this, providers cannot determine where and how AI technology can deliver meaningful value. After that, it’s about seeing if there is data to solve that problem. Yes, there is a lot of data today, but it’s not always usable. However, there are always ways to find solutions as long as goals are clear and actionable.
The third and perhaps thorniest barrier is a lack of insight into the inaccessibility of healthcare in many parts of the world. Today, over half of the world’s population does not have access to healthcare services. AI can help enhance and expand essential healthcare coverage in low-access areas. In rural Latin America, for example, Arkangel AI is helping to create models that adapt to the basic infrastructure and capabilities available to healthcare professionals. This is helping reach people who don’t have access to specialist providers like radiologists, but it is also enabling early detection of diseases like malaria or the prediction of dengue to take preventive actions and reduce excessive contagion.
For patients to experience truly positive outcomes, healthcare institutions and governments must fix the underlying issues in their systems. This means taking a clear-eyed look focusing on the needs and demands of people. Designing AI tools that can only be implemented by a few – for a few – only risks widening the gap in healthcare inequality.
Better processes, more compassionate care
Even with these formidable barriers in mind, the potential of AI to improve the patient experience, and their prognosis, is too promising to disregard.
Today’s healthcare system is overburdened: too many patients, too few practitioners, too much paperwork, too little budget. In the hands of experienced administrators and practitioners, AI tools allow healthcare systems to alleviate the strain on practitioners, increase efficiency and reduce costs. In this way, AI has the potential to make healthcare more accessible and deliver more impact.
But to achieve this, AI algorithms need to be ethical, usable and scalable. With digital healthcare data being highly sensitive, we must ensure we have a common understanding of what functional, accessible AI systems need and how to respectfully and responsibly build systems that work.
International Standards like those developed by ISO will be vital as we undertake this important work. From data sanitation to protection, International Standards like ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27040 can help ensure that healthcare providers are on top of their data collection and that they can feed relevant, healthy and secured data to AI tools.
International Standards can be a game-changer in tackling global disparities in data collection, storage and use. By setting uniform guidelines and offering crucial tools, these standards empower healthcare providers to progress on their digital data journey. Widespread adoption of ISO standards could create a strong data foundation, enabling AI tools to create more impact for more people.
By prioritizing standards and ethics and working collaboratively, we can build a healthcare ecosystem where AI acts as a powerful assistant to physicians, improving patient outcomes, increasing efficiency, and reducing costs. With clear guidelines and a steadfast focus on patient welfare, AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and save lives.