AI in healthcare is making rapid strides, so why aren’t Americans noticing the progress?

There’s no doubt about that artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare had a very successful year. Back in October, the FDA Added 178 AI devices to the list of 500+ AI technologies approved for medical use. At the top of the list for the most approved devices were two huge healthcare technology players: GE Healthcareof 42 authorized AI devices, and Siemenswith 29.

Together, the two companies accounted for nearly 40% of the new devices on the list.

Despite the leaps and bounds made in the field thanks to these two giants, a recent study by the medical intelligence firm Blue vision found that regardless of actual advances, about 50% of US adults say they have not seen or experienced improvements in their own care as a result of medical AI advancements.

Why is that? And when will consumers reap the benefits?

They already are, but may not realize it because many tools are used by clinicians behind the scenes in radiology and imaging, explains Peter Shen, head of digital healthcare at Siemens Healthineers North America. But increasing personalized medical care through the use of AI tools is something Siemens continues to refine and prioritize.

“Our strategy for AI goes beyond imaging and pattern recognition,” Shen said. “The informed diagnostics we get from AI will enable us to design better ways to care for patients. For us, it’s about more than efficiency and more than just decision-making. We want to send personalized medicine to the patient and create accessibility in medical care.”

Behind the curtain and beyond the hype

The rapid improvements in AI technology are largely aimed at making healthcare more accessible to the patients it serves by ultimately reducing costs, speeding up processes and providing even more accurate, personalized care. The benefits continue to evolve with each iteration of AI-assisted medical technology, and many of these advancements are also being used to help medical professionals behind the scenes.

Radiology and medical imaging remains the fastest growing sector of AI medical advancement, accounting for more than 85% of the FDA’s total list of 521 devices. Experts from both GE and Siemens say they anticipate further growth in this area, especially with the potential it holds to transform patient outcomes and diagnoses.

For example, Al summeran AI-powered mammography screening platform, was able to detect about 40% of all cancers in clinical trials that were initially missed by radiologists.

This is something patients may not notice, but it can certainly have an impact on their diagnoses and treatment outcomes.

“AI is moving past the hype cycle and becoming mainstream, increasing access to applications that use AI,” said Vignesh Shetty, SVP and general manager of Edison AI and platform at GE Healthcare. “As a result, the face of radiology, imaging and healthcare is changing and AI is becoming one of its distinguishing features.” When it comes to AI, he added: “It’s no longer a fear of whether AI will replace healthcare professionals, it’s more a matter of healthcare professionals using AI to differentiate themselves from those who don’t.”

Supporting patients with AI in 2023

Interestingly, Bluesight’s research found that while many patients reported not directly seeing or experiencing technological advances in their medical care, 84% of patients responded neurally or positively on a scale of 1-5 to the statement: ” I think technology healthcare more available.”

This could be a signal that there is room for improvement in education and dialogue on using AI in healthcare to build trust – something Bluesight’s research also found lacking. At the same time, the personalization capabilities of AI can potentially help with that trust, making patients feel more seen, heard and supported as well.

“AI technology has the potential to improve the accuracy and efficiency of medical diagnoses, which could help doctors provide better care to their patients,” said Shetty. “Additionally, AI-powered tools can help reduce the amount of time and effort doctors and other healthcare professionals need to perform routine tasks, freeing up more time to see patients.”

As GE enters 2023, the company is largely focused on patient support. Solutions include the Edison platform for improving patient process efficiency; the Critical Care Suite 2.0, which automates risky procedures; and its Mural platform, which allows clinicians to access the status of ICU patients to provide care and reduce time to intervention.

“What customers really appreciate is the reduction in uncertainty, whether it’s in healthcare or ridesharing or any other industry,” Shetty said. “Now imagine a 20-fold improvement in the patient and caregiver experience through intelligent scheduling or reduced MR scan and reporting times. That is the transformation that GE Healthcare is pursuing.”

As for Siemens, Shen said that by 2023, the company plans to double its focus on using its AI algorithms and technologies to improve and train pattern recognition on large amounts of clinical data and help drive better outcomes for patients. achieve.

“Instead of using AI in one clinical space, like radiology, we can train it to look at multiple clinical spaces, like data from images and also data from lab results or blood tests, or even pathology slides from a biopsy,” Shen explains. . “If we feed all of this into our AI systems and train the AI ​​to find correlations between all this clinical data, it will help clinicians make stronger, more informed diagnostic and treatment decisions about their patients.”

This kind of work with AI technology could also be used to model patient anatomy and eventually lead to the development of anatomically correct, personalized digital twins for patient care, perhaps testing the effectiveness of certain therapies in very specific digital twin simulations, before trying it out on the patient himself, Shen said.

These developments are not likely to slow down any time soon and are likely to become technologies that will engage patients more and benefit them further in healthcare. Looking ahead, AI solutions in healthcare are expected to skyrocket, growing the market to $188 billion by 2030, according to Statesman.

Ultimately, while focusing on growth, Siemens and GE Healthcare both intend to continue to prioritize driving outcomes that better serve patients.

“Driving outcomes will improve the future of AI and use information to help medical professionals make more informed diagnostic decisions and create personalized therapeutic treatments for patients,” said Shen.