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With artificial intelligence being today’s trending topic, and the simple fact that this AI in Eye Care e-newsletter has returned to your inbox, it’s clear that there are plenty of opportunities surrounding the implementation of AI technologies.
In eye care specifically, I have determined some of the potential opportunities from AI. Here are nine ways that AI will likely impact how we practice in the coming years:
- One of the early uses that is already manifesting itself is the automation of many administrative tasks such as patient scheduling, billing, managing electronic health records (EHRs), and freeing up health care professionals to spend more time focusing on patient care and less time on administrative tasks.
- Getting the most press right now is medical imaging interpretation. Taking diagnostic images and using machine vision to more efficiently and effectively look for patterns that humans might miss will likely alter our entire clinical decision-making.
- AI can save millions by making diagnostic clinical decisions or at least augmenting providers in doing so. AI technologies that augment these providers’ clinical decision-making will help define exactly what diagnostic tests should be performed. Add to that eventually determining what order in which to perform those tests and increasing the efficiency of diagnosis while also reducing unnecessary testing could save the health care systems many millions of dollars per year.
- Clinical decision support systems are also being developed that will take data from current patient-monitoring systems such as your Oura ring or your Apple watch and give us all a better holistic view of our patient’s health. These are the same systems that may also suggest evidence-based medical approaches that may not be in the provider’s current treatment library.
- AI will improve predictive analytics. Machine vision technologies and the ability to analyze huge datasets will enable AI to identify patterns in patient data and predict the onset of many chronic diseases at a much earlier stage, allowing for better outcomes through more proactive intervention. This may also allow for predictive suggestions of what consumers like to purchase from a retail standpoint, which may have a much larger clinical impact on optical inventory and sales.
- As farfetched as robotic surgery may seem, there are already technologies allowing for robotic cataract surgery. My co-editor Dr. Rehan Ahmed has written about how A.I.-driven surgical robots can assist in performing minimally invasive surgeries with high precision, reducing complications and recovery time, and at the same time improving surgical outcomes. (See “Superhuman Surgeons: How AI and Robotics Are Shaping the Future of Eye Care.”)
- Other groundbreaking AI technologies will allow for more rapid drug discovery and development by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify potential drug candidates and simulate biological processes, speeding up research and development all while cutting costs.
- A little further down the road, AI technologies will be able to comb through volumes of datasets, medical research, and specific individual characteristics, such as your genome, and compare that to other individuals with similar genotypes, phenotypes, environmental conditions, and diagnostic outcomes to develop truly personalized treatment plans, instead of our more common one-size-fits-all method utilized today. Truly individualized precision medicine is coming.
- Now, last, we finally get to the really cool stuff such as virtual health assistants. Think of it as the health care version of Siri that will use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to handle routine questions and provide basic medical advice, thus reducing many of the current burdens for health care professionals.
These opportunities offer a glimpse into the transformative potential of AI in making health care more efficient, accessible, and effective. The journal AI in Eye Care will cover all these technologies over the next few months to keep you updated on who the players are and the technologies that may impact how you see your patients.
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