How I Replaced AI

8 min readApr 9, 2021

Before Artificial Intelligence takes my job, I decided to challenge AI. Instead of writing an article following journalistic best practices and ethical standards, I did what AI would do. I created text from random sentences found on the Internet. How did this experiment go?

“I wrote a new article combining sentences found on the internet.”

There are already 858.000.000 Google search results for the term “the future of healthcare.” After reading the first twenty most popular articles, you may conclude that everything has already been said on the subject. No matter how creative and ingenious you are, let’s face the truth: it’s tough to create something unique and unusual.

Thus, I decided to do what AI is doing when composing an article — I used the content found on the Internet. I copied one sentence chosen at random from each text that appeared in the first top 50 search results. Moreover, I did not change a single word but only rearranged the order of the sentences. The whole experiment took 2 hours, slightly less than if I were to write the text myself. I didn’t have to research, double-check facts and data, compose sentences, proofread and make corrections.

I have to admit that many of the top 50 items were similar in terms of content. Hence it was easier to get a reasonably coherent text. Sure, it’s the most basic algorithm one can develop. Nevertheless, it provides pretty good results! There’s no doubt that AI would only need a few seconds to complete this task. In terms of time, I had no chance to win. But the result is admirable. To be clear — by citing sources, I am not committing plagiarism. Is AI so transparent?

Enjoy reading this 50-sentence, produced as AI would make it, article! You will be surprised by how informative and well structured it is! All references have been provided at the end of the text.

The Future of Healthcare

The future of healthcare will bring far-reaching changes, but what will it look like?

The next 20 years will witness profound change in healthcare. We are moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach towards prevention and treatment strategies tailored to individuals. Health will be defined holistically as an overall state of well-being encompassing mental, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

We’ll see medicine becoming more preventive, as well as more personalized and precise. Patients will prioritize staying healthier for longer, transforming healthcare from an episodic service to a lifelong process of managing and maintaining their health. Consumer wearables, such as smart watches and fitness trackers, are empowering people to be more in control of their health than ever before. One day, people will have a constant connection established between themselves and the doctors monitoring them. Healthcare platforms are set to become part of the ‘new normal’. Virtual care will become more mainstream and advanced, with greater use of genomics and precision medicine. Future healthcare providers are also more likely to focus their education on business than ever before.

In this new world, the patient is in charge of his or her care management on a daily basis, with “shared care” between patient and provider; the patient and primary care provider determine a health and wellness plan together and pull in resources as needed. The ultimate goal is to improve patient value, and the only way the healthcare industry will achieve this is by digitalizing healthcare, leveraging artificial intelligence and by better using healthcare data for more effective diagnoses and treatment.

Many of the exciting new technologies, approaches and solutions that have been on the horizon for many years have been greatly accelerated by Covid-19. From an administrative standpoint, telehealth has proven its ability to reduce the time pressures medical workers face.

Hospitals are likely to have a dramatic change, robots will be used to transport patients around the hospital, and this will also create a more sterile environment for the patients. Nearly all surgery will be done by robots, so the architectural design of operation departments will need to be changed accordingly. Digital technologies provide healthcare organizations the tools to support greater standardization of work, which can improve efficiency.

Ninety percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years

As the technology improves, the information deriving from patient care will also improve. The physician of the future is going to be faced with making decisions with so many data points that they cannot make the best decisions without computer-assisted support. Instead of spending at least thirty minutes with a patient to evaluate their medical history and assess current symptoms, robots can take part of that responsibility. By freeing physicians from the tasks that interfere with human connection, AI will create space for the real healing that takes place between a doctor who can listen and a patient who needs to be heard.

Professionals want to know that they have all the necessary data to treat a patient and that the data is trustworthy. As healthcare organizations move toward sharing more data with each other, the collection and creation of larger datasets will increase accuracy and allow organizations to spot trends.

The world is now entering the third wave of AI, in which programs normalize the context of various data in order to generate novel hypotheses. Over half of all UK physicians believe artificial intelligence will be a common healthcare tool over the next decade.

Digital biomarkers have the potential to be more effective and scalable than molecular, physical biomarkers of disease and present compelling value propositions across the healthcare stakeholder paradigm, for both served and under-served diseases and population. A new field of ‘predictive medical data mining’ will provide early warnings of physiological trouble ahead or indications of disease as it develops. In the longer term, consumer behavior may shift towards broader remote management of illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, heart conditions, Parkinson’s etc.

Advancements in AI, data science and smart machines, particularly their contribution to algorithmic medicine, will radically improve clinical care as important decisions are made faster and with greater physician confidence. Likewise, digital assistants with integrated artificial intelligence (AI) are some of the fastest-growing consumer technologies, and are increasingly popular with people who use them to help manage their health.

There is also opportunity for fully automated solutions — to automatically read and interpret a scan without human oversight — which could help enable instant interpretation in under-served geographies or after hours.

More than 80 percent of physicians across almost all specialties indicated they use a smartphone in their work

In 2030 phones will reach out of hospitals and touch the lives of virtually everyone, leveraging mobile platforms, IoT, and AI. Our smart phones play a big part of the digitization of healthcare as they have now become medical devices. The rise of wearable technology in healthcare promotes patient-centricity and brings wellbeing into the focus of people’s conscious thinking.

The IoMT is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and networks quickly establishing themselves as a critical part of modern healthcare.

Although the technology is advancing quickly, issues of data sharing, privacy, biases, patients’ experiences, training and integration need to be carefully and continually addressed. There are still many challenges regarding practical, ethical, and legal concerns, and evidence-based approaches for ICT-supported healthcare delivery are lacking.

Better use of technology will improve access for many people, as they will no longer have to travel long distances to receive healthcare. Sustainability, smart technology and digital services will be fundamental to this transformation, reshaping the delivery and access of healthcare services of the future.

Like many other sectors, healthcare is about to enter a period of rapid change

COVID-19 has accelerated the healthcare industry’s erstwhile sluggish digital transformation journey. Digital technology could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones, equalize the relationship between medical professionals and patients, provide cheaper, faster and more effective solutions for diseases.

More importantly, digitized healthcare will provide the opportunity for completely new, non-traditional insurgents to enter into the market for digital health, providing new products and services that aim to generate and maximize patient value in understanding future patients’ digital health preferences and combining this know-how with their well-advanced digital business models.

Patients will still need specialists with expert knowledge, but the patient and specialist don’t need to be in the same space at the same time. Physicians and caregivers will need to redefine their roles; regulators will have to create acceptable frameworks for digital health solutions and the sharing of sensitive data; and payers will have to account for new types and ways of spending. These changes will have a huge impact on the patient experience. Those who adopt and leverage modern technology, such as systems that enable telehealth, will be better poised to succeed in the months and years to come.

References:

Originally published at https://aboutdigitalhealth.com/2021/01/19/how-i-replaced-ai/

How I Replaced AI

The Future of Healthcare

Written by Artur Olesch