Artificial Intelligence is being used more and more to diagnose medical conditions. A new study has determined that AI medical diagnosis is roughly as accurate as human diagnosis. Of course, the AI is still learning and will continue to improve. This will have a major impact on the medical field over the next decade.
Lancet’s New Study on AI Medical Diagnosis
According to The Guardian: ” Artificial intelligence is on a par with human experts when it comes to making medical diagnoses based on images, a review has found.”
For several years, the possibility of using AI to provide medial expertise has been both dreamed about and developing. One of the areas that could be enhanced by AI technology is analyzing images – CAT scans, MRI’s, etc. This requires a high level of expertise and can be time intensive when done by human doctors. In fact, many hospitals in the United States had started decades ago to outsource this analysis to doctors in foreign countries, such as India.
A new study that researched AI medical diagnosis published in The Lancet has determined that AI is as successful as humans in diagnosing medical problems.
Using data from 14 studies, researchers found that deep learning algorithms correctly detected disease in 87% of cases, compared to 86% for healthcare professionals.
AI was also able to correctly identify those patients free from disease in 93% of cases, compared to 91% for healthcare professionals.
CNN: AI may be as effective as medical specialists at diagnosing disease
Although the study did call for further analysis and better data to further understand the potential of AI. This is still a growing area with further improvement expected in the near future. Morgan Stanley estimates that AI in Healthcare will be worth $10 billion by 2024.
Where do we go from here?
Obviously, there is great potential for further development of AI for use in medical care. If AI technology is roughly equal to human diagnosis of medical images – then it is safe to assume that as AI develops further it will surpass the doctors. AI medical diagnosis are the future for this area of healthcare. Soon, patients will ask “Doctor, what did the AI diagnose?”
That does not mean we will not need doctors; of course there will always be a need for their expertise. This will allow doctors to focus on other areas, including doctor-patient interactions, where humans have a strong comparative advantage over AI. This will be another tool for the doctors to use, to enhance their care of patients.
Some Further Reading
If you are interested in reading further about this topic, here are some additional links to continue.
- PWC has an interesting post about other areas where AI will enhance healthcare: AI and robotics are transforming healthcare. They identify eight different areas where AI is impacting healthcare today and in the near future.
- Earlier this year, Forbes had an in-depth article on AI and Healthcare – a giant opportunity. The discussion of AI to solve the “Iron Triangle” of healthcare (access, affordability, and effectiveness) was especially intriguing.
- Paramjeet Singh Berwal has written elsewhere on the site about how AI will affect the future. (Here and Here.)
This is just another field where AI will affect Tomorrow.
Interesting. But would you really trust a AI for that? I would want a doctor to at least double-check it.
Right now they are about evenly matched. But in the near future, the AI will be able to perform this kind of diagnosis much more accurately than a human doctor. Of course – this is just one part of what a doctor does. This will be another effective tool that doctors will be able to use.