Artificial intelligence and machine learning have made a significant impact on the way we live and work — from our smartphones’ facial recognition software and internet search engines, to the medical imaging and genome mapping applications used by medical practitioners and scientists. AI is especially important in the social media applications many of us use on a daily basis. LinkedIn just recommended a job you should apply for? That’s machine learning at work. Facebook protected you from offensive or fraudulent content? That’s AI’s natural language processing tools doing their job.
Recently, AI and its subsets have gained leverage in key health care areas such as clinical decision support, remote patient monitoring and telehealth — especially in light of COVID-19. The common goal of these applications is to help improve patient outcomes by gaining insight from compiled data. This includes vital medical notes, transmitted recordings from medical devices, laboratory images, and audio/video communications between clinicians and patients.
But as more and more data becomes accessible, what does this mean for patient privacy, liability and cybersecurity?
Health Care and AI Successes
Several years ago, the medical device company Medtronic, in partnership with IBM, created a smartphone diabetes management app, which processes millions of data points to discover potential links between glucose readings and lifestyle choices.
In another partnership, Philips, a provider of health care technology, and Salesforce, one of the leading providers of customer relationship management (CRM) in the cloud, joined forces to develop a digital health care platform. The new platform enables collaboration between professionals and the integration of vast amounts of data: electronic patient records, diagnostic and treatment information from Philips’ imaging and monitoring equipment, and information from personal devices such as Apple’s HealthKit. According to a recent study conducted by U.S. Philips, their new telehealth delivery platform for hospitals has reduced mortality rates by 26% and length of stay by 20%.