By Shane Reeves, CEO, TwelveStone Health Partners
LinkedIn: Shane Reeves
LinkedIn: TwelveStone Health Partners
Despite the overarching impact that artificial intelligence (AI) is having in the field of medicine, physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals remain skeptical of its use. For all the publicity, AI is still relatively new. Although the potential in medicine is undoubtedly expansive, stringent regulations are still not in place, meaning that AI based medical technology and solutions have hurdles that are unique to this industry. But regardless of the hurdles, AI does offer significant opportunities in healthcare. Even now, AI technology driven apps in cooperation with physicians are monitoring and managing an individual’s overall health.
In addition to care management, the once time-consuming and intricate process of discovering and developing new drugs is being dramatically accelerated by AI technologies. The efficiency with which AI can analyze vast datasets and accomplish things like identifying potential best fit candidates for certain drugs, or significantly reducing the time from discovery to clinical trials. Likewise, technologies such as genomics, advanced cancer detection blood tests, high-resolution MRIs, and sophisticated sleep analysis tools are empowering individuals to take an unprecedented proactive level of control over their health. These advancements are not merely enhancing the traditional healthcare model but are revolutionizing it, making healthcare more personalized, accessible, and tailored to the unique needs of each patient.
AI in Diagnosing Patients: Pioneering Precision Medicine
As we advance, cancer, stroke, and heart disease patients can anticipate their scans and test results being analyzed by both clinicians and AI programs. AI-driven analyses of scans and test results are set are already a reality for patients battling diseases that are difficult to diagnose and treat. One example is the Medtronic GI Genius that is addressing the fact that 26% of polyps are missed in a traditional colonoscopy. Leveraging AI helps to scale both providers and improve quality of healthcare delivery, it can also expedite the diagnostic process, and enable more paid commencement of treatments, thus improving patient outcomes.
Screening
Screening programs, particularly for cancers like breast cancer, have historically adopted a generalized approach, leading to debates over patient selection and the balance of risks and benefits. The ‘one size fits all’ methodology often clashes with the principles of personalized medicine, which seeks to tailor healthcare to the individual’s unique genetic makeup, lifestyle, and environment. But with AI – its prowess in processing and interpreting vast arrays of multi-modal data can unveil subtle patterns and signals that may go unnoticed by human clinicians. This capability is not just about enhancing existing screening programs but revolutionizing them by enabling more nuanced patient selection and risk stratification.
Cancer
Furthermore, AI stands to directly impact cancer diagnosis by automating clinical workflows and triggering further investigations or referrals based on intricate analysis of clinical parameters. This aspect of AI is particularly crucial in environments where healthcare resources are stretched thin, offering a viable solution to maintain, if not improve, the quality of care.
Access
The impact of AI on diagnostics goes beyond increasing efficiency and accuracy; it also democratizes healthcare. With the integration of AI into telehealth platforms, geographical barriers that once restricted access to quality care are being dismantled. Patients, regardless of their location, can now benefit from advanced diagnostics, ensuring that critical diagnoses are not delayed by logistical constraints and participate in clinical trials.
The fusion of high-throughput genomic sequencing with the analytical prowess of AI is driving personalized medicine in a way that allows for adjusting treatments to the individual’s genetic blueprint, lifestyle, and environmental influences. This leap forward, where treatments are not just prescribed but precisely matched, heralds a new era of healthcare—efficient, effective, and exquisitely tailored to each patient.
Revolutionizing AI for Drug Discovery and Development
The use of AI in drug development is reshaping a traditionally sluggish and costly process into an efficient and economically viable venture. The journey from conceptualization to clinical trials, once a marathon spanning years and depleting billions, is being expedited by AI’s innovative capabilities at every pivotal stage of drug discovery, highlighted by the below milestones:
- 2020: Exscientia announced the first AI-designed drug molecule entering human trials.
- 2021: DeepMind’s AlphaFold predicted structures for over 330,000 proteins, including the entire human genome, expanding to over 200 million proteins.
- 2022: Insilico Medicine began Phase I clinical trials for an AI-discovered molecule targeting a novel protein.
The impact of AI extends to molecular simulations and the prediction of drug properties, reducing the reliance on costly and time-consuming physical testing. This in-silico approach is not only faster but also significantly cheaper, allowing researchers to explore a wider range of potential drug candidates with fewer resources.
AI can also be used to analyze critical properties of drug candidates, such as toxicity and bioactivity, bypassing the need for extensive laboratory testing. Moreover, the advent of de novo drug design through AI is disrupting conventional methodologies by generating novel drug molecules from scratch. While understandably the implementation of AI in drug development will incur certain costs attributed to initial investments in training and technology, research from Carnegie Mellon University and a German institution suggests AI could slash drug discovery costs by up to 70%, highlighting the balance between initial investment and long-term efficiency gains in pharmaceutical research.
The Broader Implications and Future of AI in Healthcare
By 2035, experts envision a world transformed by AI, with breakthroughs in healthcare, personalized medicine, and digital connectivity through smart devices. Precision medicine, driven by machine learning, is set to deliver care tailored to individual patient needs, overcoming current challenges in diagnosis and treatment recommendations.
The integration of AI in clinical practice hinges on regulatory approvals, compatibility with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), standardization, and ongoing updates. Ensuring these systems are embraced by healthcare professionals and institutions is crucial for their widespread adoption.
Ethical concerns, particularly regarding patient data confidentiality and algorithmic bias, present significant challenges. Ensuring informed consent and addressing biases in AI algorithms are vital to prevent exacerbating existing healthcare disparities and to protect patient autonomy.
In Conclusion
Healthcare professionals must navigate AI tools responsibly. Maintaining human oversight, ensuring alignment with patient interests, and fostering transparency about AI’s role in patient care are essential to ethically integrate AI into healthcare practices.
While no clinician wants to hand over diagnosis and care delivery to robots just yet, we’re all for AI shouldering the load of tedious admin, freeing up our healthcare heroes to future-proof patient care with a human touch. The goal, for now, is to strike a balance, ensuring that all technological advancements in medicines are accompanied by stringent ethical and regulatory considerations that streamline processes without compromising patient health.
This article was originally published on Healthcare Business Today and is republished here with permission.