AI, a Game-Changer for Healthcare
Point of view — The current healthcare landscape is shaped by AI’s potential to enhance diagnosis, treatments, and remote care through the leveraging of integrated data—a fabulous opportunity that also comes with ethical and regulatory challenges.
MAURIZIO SANARICO /
CHIEF DATA SCIENTIST AND GLOBAL AI ADVISOR — SDG GROUP
The Current Scenario
— Many concomitant factors are impacting healthcare systems around the world. We have seen vast improvements with the help of available data from EHR (Electronic Health Record), imaging, and various other factors enabling advanced AI algorithms that provide healthcare practitioners with powerful tools. These tools enhance precision medicine and support preventive actions. On another hand, there are negative factors to be considered, such as the ageing of populations with associated increase of chronicity, budget restrictions, and the scarcity of healthcare personnel and medical doctors.
Opportunity from Artificial Intelligence
— AI tools provide a potential solution to healthcare system challenges by enabling faster and more accurate diagnosis and treatment through the analysis of clinical data, diagnostic images, vital signs, patient symptoms, and available multiomics and lifestyle summaries. AI can assist physicians by providing personalised treatment recommendations, leading to earlier prescription of therapies and better clinical outcomes. Promoting and establishing sustainable telemedicine and remote monitoring through a “one-to-many” AI model, offers the possibility of treating numerous patients from a distance. This can be carried out through wearable devices or smart sensors.
Moreover, by utilising integrated data effectively, we can reduce the risk of unnecessary hospitalisation, enhance education and training, and employ generative AI to develop training platforms and virtual medical simulations for medical students and health professionals. AI can also be used to assist the population with “human-like” virtual assistants and, ultimately, promote and support medical research thanks to properly organised data.
Data and AI Governance
— All of these functions must be appropriately governed to grant access to the different actors in the right way and format, with particular respect to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the criteria of fairness and ethical restrictions put forward by the AI Act. For example, medical doctors should have access to data and understandable AI results for their patients. Research can be improved with access to anonymous data, focusing on the relationships between the variables of any type gathered and made available. Similarly, AI governance involves avoiding biases, misleading results, and addressing other aspects covered in current regulations.
