No longer science fiction: Artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming healthcare
No longer science fiction: Artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming healthcare
Artificial intelligence – AI – is getting increasingly sophisticated at doing what humans do, albeit more efficiently, more quickly, and more cheaply. While AI and robotics are becoming a natural part of our everyday lives, their potential within healthcare is vast.
Most of us are barely aware of it, but AI is everywhere we turn – it’s in our cars, telling us when it’s time for the engine to be serviced based on our driving patterns; it’s in our everyday Google searches and the suggestions from Amazon that follow us around the web; it’s the chatbot on the end of the telephone in call service centres. In homes, workplaces and clinical environments around the world, intelligent technologies such as AI and robots are supporting, diagnosing and treating people. How we embrace AI and robotics to complement and enhance healthcare services today will define our ability to deliver more effective, efficient and responsive healthcare services that reap improved health outcomes, which enabling individuals to own and manage their daily health needs. Healthcare organisations will need to consider which tasks are more suited for whom – man or machine
– and reallocate resources to ensure that the patients who need the human touch have access to the care they need. Megatrends in healthcare There are a number of megatrends converging in healthcare that are setting the scene for the adoption of intelligent technologies. The value challenge. In countries across the globe, not least Sweden, there is an escalating demand driven by long-term and chronic disease and rising healthcare costs, exacerbated by an ageing population and limited resources (finances, workforce specialists, etc.). Today, persons with one or more chronic diseases contribute to around 85% of total healthcare expenditure in Sweden.1 Chronic disease will be a mounting challenge – the prevalence of chronic disease is naturally related to age and the population will continue to grow older, with the proportion of the Swedish population aged 85 years and above set to double by the year 2050.
