The Healthcare Forefront:
The present times have witnessed the downgrade of the health treatment results, alongside an unfortunate aspect of the aging population, costly pharmaceuticals, and administrative waste, all simply adding up to the medical costs and disappointments.
Amongst such scenarios, there has been the rise of Chronic Diseases that have proved to be the chief agent of mortality and disability across many countries. Not only this, it has proved to be one of the major elements in influencing the rising healthcare spending. Such a setting of heightened ailments such as diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, etc., has spurred management and prevention of Chronic Disease as one of the prime priorities for various nations.
Now, as we have understood how the healthcare sector is suffering from the massive toll of chronic diseases that are further leading to increased spending on healthcare and poor patient outcomes, let’s also have a look at what the AI sector looks like in the healthcare arena, on the other hand.
A Sneak Peek Into The AI For Healthcare Market:
The Artificial Intelligence market has already greatly impacted the healthcare sector by registering a market share of USD 4.9 billion in 2020, which is still expected to rise to USD 45.2 billion by 2026. As per the reports presented by Markets and Markets, the global AI in the healthcare market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 44.9%.
And what had stimulated such tremendous growth of AI in the healthcare sector? Well, the following reasons could be counted for the same –
- Developing quantity of healthcare data
- Swelling complexities of datasets
- Intensifying want to lessen healthcare expenses
- Advancing computing ability
- Building several cross-industry connections & collaborations
- Scaling asymmetry between health workforce and patients
It’s therefore clear that AI has become a necessity to streamline the healthcare sector. It’s time now that we narrow down our study specifically to AI for chronic disease management. Here we go…
When AI Took The Reigns Of Chronic Disease Management
Nowadays, chronic conditions like heart disease, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, etc., are hitting a majority of the population, and Chronic Disease Management is an integrated care approach that manages and improves such conditions. What challenges does AI have in line to solve when we talk about Chronic Diseases? There are many challenges, right from high healthcare costs, patient education, screenings, monitoring, frequent check-ups to full-fledged treatments, and more.
So, do we mean to say that AI would take over the conventional healthcare techniques and judgments when it comes to Chronic Diseases? No, definitely not. The clinician’s judgment in patient care stands no alternative, but in the form of advanced data-driven technologies like Artificial Intelligence, the delivery of the right care to the right patient can be ensured at the right time.
The approach of advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning has helped care delivery evolve from reactive disease treatment to proactive and preventive care by enabling the facility to draw actionable conclusions from its big data resources.
As per the different studies performed across the globe, there have been several findings regarding the impactful and effective application of AI/ML towards chronic diseases diagnosis and management. Let’s take a look at a few:
- AI can be practiced to identify chronic ailments, particularly through medical imagery and ECG data coupled with patient demography and health records.
- Image analysis combined with the ML model can study historical medical data to recognize a pattern similar to other patients for detecting diseases.
Such ML models need to be trained with data generated from different clinical activities, including screening, diagnosis, treatment assignment, and more. This further helps such algorithms to learn similar groups of subjects, associations between subject features, and outcomes of interest.
Managing The Disease Spread With Artificial Intelligence
When it comes to chronic diseases, care management is something that becomes a perpetual aspect, majorly taken care of by the patient. In such cases, we can employ Artificial Intelligence in the form of virtual nurse assistants that could further help warrant drug constancy and monitoring by reading, prompting, and connecting with biometric tools to assemble vital data.
It’s not always simple or possible to keep cognizance of the pain. Some patients live with chronic pain, which is challenging to diagnose clinically. Hence, AI is required also for estimating and controlling chronic pain. But, how? You would be wondering. Artificial Intelligence coupled with facial recognition algorithms can assist in identifying and observing chronic pain in patients by monitoring facial muscle movements in individuals who are incapable of reporting the pain by themselves, providing a quantifiable score of the pain they’re experiencing. This information is very critical for healthcare professionals to customize the treatment plan.
Artificial Intelligence & Its Power To Prevent The Rise Of Chronic Disease
Artificial Intelligence-based Machine Learning models have the potential to assist patients when it comes to the initial detection of infection signs in patients before they become chronic. Moreover, they can support in classifying patients who are at risk for heart disease, hypertension, and pre-diabetes, providing immediate intervention and preventive care strategies.
Even when it’s about anticipating hospitalization of existing chronic patients who’re undergoing treatment, AI stands to be a front player. It helps perpetual monitoring the patient’s vitals to identify the event of worsening conditions leading to hospitalization.
The Concluding Lines
Artificial Intelligence has the capability to unlock the true potential of data. When combined with sensor technology, it can provide actionable insights to guide clinical decisions for remotely diagnosing, treating, and managing different chronic conditions.
At Teksun, we provide the best resources and consultancy to let you employ Artificial Intelligence in Chronic Disease Management and other healthcare aspects. We let the collected data produce new acumen and possibilities for affordable and scalable care with the help of AI solutions.
