Peta Rolls came to anticipate getting Aida's daily check-in each morning.
A daily check-in call by an automated voice assistant was not part of the care package Rolls envisioned when she enrolled for the in-home support however when they asked to be part of the trial four months ago, the elderly lady agreed because she wished to contribute. Although, to be honest, her hopes were low.
Even so, when she got the call, she says: “I was amazed by how responsive she was. It was impressive for a robot.”
“She’d always ask ‘how are you feeling today?’ and that provides a chance if you feel unwell to mention your symptoms, or I might reply ‘I’m fine, thank you’.”
“She would go on to ask follow-up questions – ‘did you manage to go outdoors today?’”
Aida would also inquire about what the user was planning for the day and “it would reply appropriately.”
“If I would say I plan to go shopping, it would ask nice shopping or food shopping? I found it entertaining.”
Bots Easing the Workload on Healthcare Professionals
The trial, which has recently concluded its first phase, is an example in which progress in artificial intelligence are being integrated in the medical field.
Digital health company the provider approached the care organization regarding the trial to use its generative AI technology to offer companionship, along with an opportunity for home care clients to report any medical concerns or concerns for a staff member to follow up.
Dean Jones, head of St Vincent’s At Home, explains the service being trialled does not replace any in-person visits.
“Clients continue to get a regular face to face meeting, but in between visits … the automated system enables a routine call, which can then escalate any possible issues to either our team or a client’s family,” Jones says.
Dr Tina Campbell, the CEO of Healthily, says there have been no any negative events noted from the St Vincent’s trial.
The company uses advanced AI “with strict safety protocols” to guarantee the interaction is secure and procedures are established to respond to serious health issues promptly, Campbell states. As an instance, if a patient is experiencing heart symptoms, it would be flagged to the care team and the conversation terminated so the person could dial triple zero.
She thinks AI has an important role given staffing shortages throughout the medical industry.
“What we can do very safely, with technology like this, is reduce the administrative load on the workforce so qualified health professionals can focus on performing the duties that they specialize in,” she says.
Artificial Intelligence Long Established as Often Believed
An expert, the founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, explains older forms of artificial intelligence have been a common feature of healthcare for a considerable period, often in “back office services” such as interpreting scans, cardiograms and lab reports.
“Software that performs a function that requires judgment in certain aspects is artificial intelligence, irrespective of how it accomplishes it,” says the professor, who is also the head of the health informatics center at a leading university.
“When visiting the imaging department, medical imaging center or pathology lab, you will find software in machines doing just that.”
Over the past decade, advanced versions of artificial intelligence called “machine learning” – a neural network method that enables systems to learn from extensive datasets – have been used to read diagnostic scans and improve diagnosis, the expert says.
Recently, BreastScreen NSW became the nation's pioneering public health initiative to introduce machine reading technology to assist specialists in interpreting a specific set of breast scans.
These represent specialized tools that continue to need a qualified physician to evaluate the diagnosis they could indicate, and the responsibility for a clinical judgment rests with the medical practitioner, Coiera emphasizes.
AI’s Role in Identifying Illness Early
The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in the city has been collaborating with researchers from a UK university who pioneered artificial intelligence techniques to detect epilepsy brain abnormalities called focal cortical dysplasias from brain scans.
These abnormalities trigger epileptic episodes that crequently are resistant with drugs, meaning surgical intervention to excise the tissue becomes the sole option. But, the procedure can proceed if the doctors can locate the affected area.
In research published this week in the journal Epilepsia, a group from the research body, led by neurologist Emma Macdonald-Laurs, demonstrated their “AI epilepsy detective” could detect the abnormalities in up to 94% of cases from advanced imaging in a specific form of the lesions that have traditionally been missed in more than half of patients (60%).
The system was developed using the images of a group of individuals and then evaluated with pediatric cases and 12 adults. Of the 17 children, twelve underwent operations and eleven became free of seizures.
The tool uses AI algorithms similar to the breast cancer screening – highlighting regions of abnormality, which are subsequently reviewed by experts “but it makes it a lot quicker to get to the answers,” Macdonald-Laurs says.
She emphasises the researchers are still in the “early phases” of the project, with a further study required to advance the tool heading towards clinical implementation.
A leading neurologist, a neurologist who was not involved in the study, notes modern imaging now generate such vast quantities of detailed information that it is hard for a person to go through it accurately. So for doctors the challenge of locating these lesions was like “searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“It’s a great demonstration of how artificial intelligence can support doctors in making earlier, more accurate diagnoses, and has the ability to enhance operation opportunities and results for children with otherwise intractable epilepsy,” the professor says.
Illness Identification in the Years Ahead
A public health expert, the vice-president of the international body's AI health division, explains advanced AI systems are additionally used to track and forecast disease outbreaks.
The expert, who presented last month at the Public Health of Australia’s conference in Wollongong, cited a tech firm, a company established by medical experts and which was an early detector to detect the coronavirus pandemic.
Content-creating AI is a further subset of deep learning, in which the technology can generate new content using training data. Such applications in healthcare include programs such as the virtual assistant as well as the AI scribes doctors and allied health professionals are adopting more.
A GP representative, the president of the national GP body, says GPs have been embracing AI scribes, which records the appointment and turns into a consultation note that can be included in the patient record.
The president says the main benefit of the tools is that it improves the quality of the interaction between the doctor and patient.
Dr Danielle McMullen, the president of the Australian Medical Association, agrees that scribes are helping physicians optimise their time and says AI also has the potential to help doctors avoid repeated examinations and imaging for their clients, if the {promised digitisation|planned digitalization
