Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things
Artificial intelligence (AI) in health care is the use of complex algorithms and software to approximate human analysis of complicated medical data. The applications in medicine are potentially limitless given the rapid accumulation of data related to health care.
According to Forbes, AI for health-care IT application will cross $1.7 billion by 2019.2 By operationalizing AI platforms across select health-care workflows, organizations could see significant productivity gains during the next few years. Forbes also predicts more AI solutions will be used in imaging diagnostics, drug discovery, and risk-analytics applications.2
At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, researchers use an in-house AI system known as Deep Patient, to predict risk factors for 78 different diseases. Doctors use the system to aid in diagnoses.9 AI is being used to diagnose patient wounds via smartphones, remotely monitor the elderly, and help health systems to digitally verify a patient’s insurance information.
Dr. Lesnick observed that chess computers started beating grand masters more than 20 years ago. However, the best chess players, in combination with a computer, can still reliably beat a computer alone. We need organizations like CHEST to help us become more adept at using technology. AI is a powerful tool but just another instrument to be employed in care of patients.
Big data and AI will combine to create a new ways of practicing medicine in the coming years, but what this trend will mean to individual clinicians remains to seen.
An area of rapid development is the Internet of Things, the extension of internet connectivity into everyday objects and devices designed to monitor and send information. Health-care devices now incorporate AI, real-time analytics, machine learning, physiologic sensors, and embedded systems.10 Physicians will increasingly have access to real-time data on individual patients. For physicians, managing, storing, and analyzing data from the personalized health-care devices of their patients will be a major challenge as the Internet of Things continues to expand into health care.
Dr. Lesnick noted, “In my collaboration with Georgia Tech [in Atlanta], one area I’m really excited about is process mining. Instead of sorting individual data points for statistical correlation, process mining looks at groups of actions and decisions. We’ve applied this to our local emergency room. I’m hoping we can find the most efficient processes and hardwire them in order sets. If we can eventually apply process mining to the health-care system as a whole, we might start to see gains in efficiencies.”
Gamification
Gamification is the term used to describe any tool or platform that applies game mechanics to nongame initiatives in order to encourage and increase engagement. Elements of gamification often include the use of badges, reward points, prizes, social interaction, and leaderboards. Gamification is frequently used by sales teams, marketers, employee training and performance management, onboarding, learning management, and health and wellness.11