Finally, some non-scary artificial intelligence (AI) news that won’t scare the living bejeezus out of you: artificial intelligence has proven to be a key feather in the transformative cap of health care
We are benefitted by AI when it can trumpet the need for preventative interventions by predicting such health threats as catching type 1 diabetes and helping predict breast cancer, along with its role in automated operations and precision surgery.
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Yes, the benefits of AI in the health care spectrum are truly life-changing… and quite literally saving lives.
Another big AI game changer? Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are using machine learning to estimate the risk of cardiovascular death. The system, RiskCardio, focuses on patients who have survived an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and can better predict the risk of death caused by cardiovascular issues that block or reduce blood flow.
“Using just the first 15 minutes of a patient’s raw electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, the tool produces a score that places patients into different risk categories,” CSAIL explained.
RiskCardio’s technology uses just the patient’s raw ECG signal to determine cardiovascular risk—without requiring any additional external patient information such as age or weight. Based on the sets of consecutive beats in the sample, RiskCardio can determine whether a patient will die within 30 days or up to a year.
So why is this a good thing?
If a patient with ASC checks into a hospital, a doctor can use RiskCardio’s AI technology to determine the appropriate level of treatment.
“Machine learning is particularly good at identifying patterns, which is deeply relevant to assessing patient risk,” stated Divya Shanmugam, the lead author on the research paper about RiskCardio.
The advantage AI offers over traditional analytics and clinical decision-making techniques is unprecedented insight for physicians to gain regarding diagnostics, care processes, treatment variability and outcomes for patients.
The bottom line is that AI is being developed to prevent death and take precautions. And people have taken note; according to Forbes, the total investment in health care is expected to reach $6.6 billion by 2021. Not to mention, AI advances could potentially created $150 billion in annual savings for the United States health care economy by 2026.
