Did you know the healthcare industry’s expenditure on AI software will increase from $4.4 billion last year by about 40% in 2023? Healthcare is growing faster than other industries, and it is predicted that by 2027, the total expenditure on Artificial Intelligence in this sector will rank second to consumers.
As populations worldwide start aging and public health crises become more frequent, there is a lot of pressure on the improvement of patient care. The focus now is on improving efficiency and delivering high-quality patient care, reducing costs, and implementing the latest technologies in drug therapy.
How can AI revolutionize the healthcare industry and make it more efficient?
Healthcare environments are overloaded with datasets that must be leveraged. In order to make use of this data, machine learning and AI methods are intelligently integrated into the workflows. The biggest problem is unlocking datasets that are inside disconnected digital systems. This data must be transformed into actionable insights for modernizing the healthcare industry.
Today, healthcare companies look at using AI for a wide range of applications, from better clinical decision-making to enhancing operational efficiencies and extracting insights from data buried inside files.
Achieving operational efficiency is now the biggest priority for hospitals as their revenue margins become tighter than ever. AI-enhanced robotic processes and AI-powered tools can boost productivity, operational efficiency, and clinical accuracy, cutting down overall costs.
How exactly does it achieve all of this?
Automating repetitive tasks: AI has the power to automate mundane operations. According to reports, almost 40% of the jobs done by the support staff in healthcare and nearly 33% of those performed by medical practitioners can be automated. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to software robots with machine-learning powers to automate a wide range of functions, like billing and admissions.
Making providers more productive: It’s not only the back office that’s overburdened with administrative duties. Even writing patient summaries, test orders, prescriptions, and chart notes for electronic health records systems takes time and effort. This makes it hard for providers to devote their energy to delivering quality patient care. According to reports, AI has the potential to make healthcare providers far more productive by eliminating such manual jobs.
Discovering new drugs and cures: Pharmaceutical companies are always looking for ways to shorten and cut down on the costs of drug-making. But, they cannot compromise human health simply to make profits. Developing new drugs with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence can be profitable. According to a report by Bekryl Intelligence, AI can guarantee almost $70 billion in savings for drug discovery by 2028.
AI can be viewed as “smart” investment for healthcare organizations. While healthcare is yet to unlock AI’s true potential, the industry is already working hard to gather data and use it smartly to improve outcomes. Some of the areas in which AI has been used for modernizing healthcare are medication analytics, risk stratification among patient populations, clinical pathway predictions, the effectiveness of treatments, error propensity, and predictions for infection rate growth, surgical robots, mindfulness health tracking, claims processing, management of medical records, etc.
AI is actually making our world healthier by augmenting or automating work done by hospital staff and doctors. One can expect many repetitive tasks to get fully automated and AI to be used for improving patient outcomes. Insider Intelligence says that almost 30% of costs in healthcare are for administrative tasks. If we can devise efficient ways to make healthcare modern and automated, AI can have a significant impact on patient care and economies.
