By Dr AK Srivastava
‘We need to design and build AI that helps healthcare professionals be better at what they do. The aim should be enabling humans to become better learners and decision-makers.’ – Mihaela van der Schaar, PhD, Director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
AI or Artificial intelligence is now opening new chapters of success in numerous fields of human life. AI simply means to make machines or computers work or think like human beings. The term AI was first coined by American scientist John McCarthy in 1956. Since then, much research has been going on to explore new and superior dimensions of AI. It is being used with increasing ease and success in the fields of education, banking, finance, markets, manufacturing, e-commerce, communication, space technology and medical sciences. In fact, no area of human interest is left where AI is not contributing.
In this article we will discuss how the advancement of AI has changed the landscape of medical sciences. It is playing a wonderful role in accessing, reading reports, diagnosis, patient prognosis, drug discovery and treatment of patients. It also suggests who is the most qualified and suitable doctor available within reach to treat the particular patient. It can perceive and process enormous amounts of data and complex algorithms related to a disease or patient in a fraction of a second. In other words, we can provide more personalised medical care to a patient according to their need.
In the field of Radiology, AI is doing a wonderful job as it can read all sorts of reports and medical images like X ray, MRI, CT Scan, etc., with more precision and accuracy than a human doctor does. Similarly, in dermatology, it helps with the diagnosis of skin cancer, skin lesions and psoriasis. It saves time and guides doctors to reach the best action plan for treatment.
AI can predict the emerging hotspots of a pandemic by assessing and assimilating diverse types of data. It helps in locating the point or country of origin of a particular virus. This helps in keeping people in quarantine and shifting the unaffected population to different areas.
AI is extremely helpful in the detection of diabetic retinopathy in primary stages as it has the capability of reading or studying images at the granular level. This helps ophthalmologists to find the latest and most effective line of treatment.
AI has revolutionised the treatment of cancer and it can identify cancer cells quickly. AI informs doctors and patients about the types and stages of cancer correctly. It can assist in identifying the correct anticancer drugs and adjusting the most appropriate quantity of drugs to be administered. A radiologist is guided to tailor an automatically managed radiation treatment plan. It also manages the use of chemotherapy drugs in order to maximise the chemotherapy regimen.
AI has helped in handling neurological diseases as it can analyse human genomic data and identify drugs to combat diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson. Researchers are working hard to find out the causes of autism and other mental illnesses through AI applications.
AI can help beyond the walls of hospitals and patients staying in far off places or villages can be guided about their health care. Severe surgical operations can be monitored by doctors sitting in another city or country through computers. It can decode genetic and genomic data with miraculous speed. The process of different types of operations is monitored by computers sidelining the apprehensions of human error. Even robots monitored by AI guide doctors to perform surgery with perfection.
There are some very pertinent ethical and regulatory issues related to AI applications in the medical sciences. First of all, there is no guarantee of secrecy of data or the medical history of patients. The physicians work on trust and if sensitive data or information regarding patients’ illness is leaked or misused for malicious and dubious intentions, it can invite multiple troubles for patients and physicians. Secondly, if anything goes wrong during treatment guided by AI applications, who is to be blamed? Who will take responsibility-the doctor or AI? The success of treatment depends on the coordination, knowledge and wisdom of the data provider (analyst) and the doctor. If one of them fails to perform with accuracy, the other one is in trouble unnecessarily. There are no legal guidelines in these matters. It is the doctors’ duty to explain to the patients the implications and outcome of AI applications in their treatment. It is also patients’ right to know such details before surgery or treatment. All these things are not as easy as they appear to us.
The process of treating a patient requires more than medicine and surgery. It also requires human sympathy, kindness, care and a deep sense of compassion. All these virtues are missing in AI. AI is still at a very initial stage, and it can’t offer hundred percent guarantees in many areas where it is being used. For example, treatment of neurological diseases through stem cell therapy is allowed in many countries but it is also banned in other countries.
Many people feel that AI will replace doctors soon. This is just an apprehension. On the contrary, AI will assist, guide and motivate physicians towards better and cost-effective treatments.
In conclusion, we can say that AI is contributing significantly to the medical sciences. It is still at the stage of infancy, and it will continue to grow in the future as research is being carried out all over the world. It has the miraculous power to study and analyse the most complex and challenging data about diseases and patients. It is an interdisciplinary science that will bring a revolution to human life. It is not going to replace medical professionals but will felicitate them towards better accuracy and competence.
‘AI offers great potential [but] integrating it into medical workflow software requires caution. While potentially impeding progress, government regulations play a crucial role in protecting patients and society.’ – Rob Versaw, MBA, Vice President of innovation & growth at Envista Holdings.
(Dr AK Srivastava is Principal, DAV Inter College, Dehradun.)
