If only all that information could be directly transferred in a quick upload…

Artificial Intelligence Works For The Medical Field

While a data upload doesn’t apply to humans, artificial intelligence in the health care industry has been able to do just that. The massive volumes of information about human health can be uploaded into machines that sift, sort, analyze, and predict, i.e. diagnose, medical conditions.

Much of practicing medicine is rote memorization of classes of symptoms that relate to specific illnesses, or traits of diseases that match particular viral or bacterial organisms. A good chunk of time in medical school is spent memorizing names, identifiers, and reactions to pathogens. It’s a data download. So, add into the practice the use of machines capable of taking the data and finding patterns, and now there are applicable uses for artificial intelligence in the medical field.

Medical Research Is The Front Line Of Defense

Breakthroughs in research are leaps in human progress that make us live longer, stronger, and better. When we conquer a disease and discover a cure or find the source for an illness, we evolve and expand our lifespan. Smallpox, penicillin, AIDs, cancer, and more have all been topics of research that saved human lives and contributed to improving the human condition. It’s these and other types of searches for answers that will save us all.

Unfortunately, the searches take time. Longitudinal studies take place over years or even decades. During that stretch of time, massive amounts of data are collected, processed, stored, cataloged, etc. Researchers must disseminate meaning from it all, and depending on how long the study runs, they may even need to find ways to pass along the information to the next round of researchers taking the reins.

Research also takes resources. Collecting samples, growing and studying cells, accounting for instruments and implements, all become costly and may risk outcomes if supplies run short.

Faster Research Results Save Lives Sooner

Given these circumstances and parameters of research, the use of artificial intelligence has the potential to make a huge impact to the medical field. AI doesn’t fatigue, retire, or forget like its human research counterparts. If anything, machine learning speeds up the timeline between connecting data points and finding outcomes.

Machines churn massive amounts of data in less time and with less energy than a human being, and, there may be less resources using virtual simulations. Moreover, machine learning can assess the data. Programs can sift data to find patterns to make predictions.

For example, machines can churn data and find a pattern, like maybe a pathogen that only affects people with a certain recessive gene. Now, it’s possible to predict who might be at risk.

The implications of artificial intelligence in medical research are astounding. Machine-powered research has the capacity to speed up and make discoveries that save lives.