Health care workers have been facing some of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with more precautions being implemented, we are still seeing an increase in the number of reported cases. In fact, Reuters has reported the average infection rate for healthcare workers is 6%. This means of the 3.5 million cases reported globally, there could be more than 200,000 health care workers infected by COVID-19 today. In an already under-staffed and over-worked institution, health care providers are exploring AI-driven diagnostics as a way to detect insights, ease the burden of health care workers, and reduce their risk of infection.

AI-driven diagnostics has already proven to show a positive impact within the health care industry. Many institutions already implemented AI solutions to assist medical professionals in delivering the highest level of care. These three benefits are not only reducing and improving diagnosis but are also making it safer for health care workers to provide care.

Reduced Time for Diagnosis

A medical data analysis company in Beijing, LinkingMed, is able to diagnose pneumonia, a complication of COVID-19, in less than a minute. The diagnosis is done from analyzing a CT scan, and its test results are accurate 92% of the time, with a test recall rate of 97%.

Higher Accuracy

Many artificial intelligence diagnostics platforms have been outperforming medical experts, especially on medical imaging tasks. A team of Google and Imperial College researchers recently developed an AI model that can diagnose breast cancer from mammograms. During testing, the tool not only outperformed individual radiologists, but was still as good as two radiologists working together.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Two Israeli hospitals have launched an AI-based remote ICU to support COVID-19 patients. Their platform is trained to identify respiratory deterioration in advance, enabling early interventions that might change the clinical outcome. This allows health care workers to identify disease severity from a remote command center.

With so much upside, why are health care providers skeptical about adopting this type of technology? One reason is the fear that Artificial Intelligence will replace medical professionals.

In truth, AI could potentially replace many repetitive tasks that health care workers have to perform. However, these platforms are designed to assist medical professionals in their decision-making, not replace them completely. AI technology can handle backlogs of scans, offer preliminary or routine analysis on health data, and provide insight when a health care worker is not present. Diagnosing patients is a very delicate task. Implementing AI-driven diagnostics throughout a health care organization gives health care providers the capability of providing a higher level of care in less time than before.

Nowigence has created an AI solution, Pluaris™, that comprehends textual data, like doctors’ reports with human-like interpretive intelligence. It connects the diagnosis with MRI, CT Scan, Mammograms, and X-rays to train machines. In the end, machines work faster, are more accurate, work 24/7, facilitate remote working, and allow clinics to handle more patients in less time.