According to Coursera, AI is “the theory and development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that historically required human intelligence, such as recognizing speech, making decisions and identifying patterns”. In recent times, AI tools are breaking down the walls of ignorance in the society. Teenagers and adults alike now use AI. Statistics showed that 86% of university students regularly use AI for their studies, and 20% of adults aged 18 to 59 use AI to edit document. Also, they have become indispensable companions to medical practitioners by offering support in diagnostics, treatment planning, workflow management and patient engagement. Here are some widely used AI tools across various domains of medicine.

Digital Health or Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS)

CDSS Uses diagnostic support tools often leveraging on technologies like AI. Examples include:

• IBM: IBM uses Literature to assist complex  to improve diagnoses and treatment options.
• Google Deepmind analyzes medical imaging like eye scans and predicting kidney injury.
• Aidoc helps Radiologists detect abnormalities like pulmonary embolisms or brain hemorrhages in CT scans.
• Path AI is used for Pathology slide analysis and improving cancer diagnosis accuracy.

Genomic Medicine

Tailors treatment and diagnostic approaches to an individual unique genetic profile. It aims to provide a personalized healthcare by understanding how family genetic variations impact diseases susceptibility and therapy. Commonly used tools include:

• Tempus: It combines genetic data to tailor cancer treatments.
• Foundation Medicine: Uses AI in genomic profiling for personalized oncology therapy.

Radiology

This domain of medicine heavily relies on medical imaging technologies such as X-rays, MRI, CT-scans and ultrasound to diagnose and treat diseases. Some AI tools that are widely used include:

• Zebra Medical Vision: Can detect diseases from imaging data including breast cancer and osteoporosis.
• Arterys: It is used for diagnosing cardiac MRI, lung CT and more.
• Lunit: It is an AI tool for chest X-ray interpretation and cancer detection.

Digital Health or Health Informatics

This field of medicine leverages technologies like virtual health assistants and chatbots to improve healthcare access and enhance patient engagement. These tools can help with tasks such as symptom checking, appointments scheduling, medication reminders and health education. Examples include:

• Buoy Health: It’s a symptom checker and triage AI that interacts conversationally with patients.
• Ada Health: offers symptom assessment and health guidance based on user inputs.
• Babylon Health: Combines symptom checking with telehealth services.

Healthcare Operations Management

Concentrates on using administrative strategies and workflow optimization to improve productivity, quality and cost effectiveness of healthcare delivery. Examples are:

• Olive AI: Automates hospital tasks like billing, eligibility checks and so on.
• Suki AI: Is a voice enabled digital assistant for documentation in electronic health records (EHRs).
• Nuance DAX (Dragon Ambient experience): Instantly transcribes patient-doctor interactions into structured notes.

 Psychiatry or Behavioral Health Analytics

This field of medicine employ mental health insights and behavioral analytics to understand, diagnose and treat mental health conditions. By analyzing patterns, data related behavior and mental wellbeing, professionals in this domain aim to improve outcomes and provide more personal care for individuals with mental health challenge. Woebot is an example of AI tool used in this field.

To cut to the chase, though AI cannot replace doctors, it is helping medical personnel to leverage vast amounts of medical knowledge and analyze patient data to generate hypotheses, suggest potential diagnoses, alleviate physician burnout, saving time, detecting diseases early and classifying them and so on. It’s versatility not only accommodated doctors, but individuals especially youths. They should utilize the wheel of Artificial Intelligence in managing their health in this era of junk consumption.

You can also read: Precision Medicine