The field of medicine has ever been evolving. From germ theory, pasteurization to using MRI’s every leap in the medical field is intertwined with science.
During the pandemic season, the use of modern technologies like artificial intelligence and big data analytics were used to predict and map the spread of the virus. This has been very helpful in containing the virus to an extent.
AI as a diagnostic tool.
Recently the University of Pittsburgh has published an article where artificial intelligence is used to detect prostate cancer. It is noted that the accuracy in which the cancer was detected was up to 98%. Now it is considered that humans are susceptible to make medical errors based on their judgments that are based on their past experiences. This has led to medical errors. In the case of artificial intelligence this biased based on past experience does not exist. The algorithm was made by using 100 samples of prostate cancer cells and making the algorithm learn the difference between a cancerous cell and a healthy cell. This ensures that the algorithm makes fewer errors. The algorithm has been found to flag all the cells which were flagged by the doctors and also the ones which were not flagged by the doctors. Now, this is extremely useful for doctors who are inexperienced in this field to help with diagnosing cancer. This development has opened the ways to areas artificial intelligence can be used. The algorithm can be replicated to other forms of cancer, epidemiological research, vaccine development, etc. Thus, not only in the field of diagnostics but also in the field of vaccine development artificial intelligence can be used.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence can be used as a powerful tool that can be used to make diagnosis and detection of diseases easy. Now the average waiting for disease detection can be reduced and the error rate can be brought down. This will ensure a more effective medical system. Also by augmenting artificial intelligence into the medical system and making a centralized medical data based for all the patients, the past records and disease history can be used to diagnose a patient more effectively using AI.
