The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken both publicly and privately funded healthcare systems globally, raising the question of whether a healthcare system driven by artificial intelligence (AI) could have better positioned Canada to navigate this uncharted territory.
Imagine an intelligent healthcare system, one that is proactive, responsive and based on a foundation of innovation that ebbs and flows with the demands of its population. What if we had a system in which electronic medical records seamlessly speak to one another, where clinicians can see patients’ health histories regardless of location, thereby promoting the delivery of prompt quality and patient centered care? Examples from Estonia and Finland present national Electronic Medical Record models that provide a glimpse into infrastructure that promotes enhanced continuity of care.
With AI already a part of our daily lives, there is an opportunity for public health to integrate AI into its daily work for rapid infectious disease identification and vaccine development. Bluedot, a Toronto based AI company, was the first to identify COVID-19, nine days before the World Health Organization released its statement. A number of companies have begun exploring the use of AI to hasten and enhance the drug-development process, including in the development of vaccines and to assist researchers in reviewing tens of thousands of relevant research papers at an extraordinary pace. Other notable applications of AI in healthcare include personalizing and tailoring mental health treatment to patients, as demonstrated by Montreal-based start-up Aifred Health, and to improve the detection and diagnosis of diseases through an AI-powered medical imaging platform, as showcased by San Francisco-based start-up Arterys. To support the pandemic response, Arterys has opened its platform to developers working on medical-imaging AI models related to COVID-19 and is working with researchers and clinicians globally to develop more tools to fight the pandemic.
But go further and imagine a system where Robotics, Chatbots and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) are consistently explored and rapidly integrated into practice, thereby allowing the use of these technologies to actively diagnose, monitor and treat diseases remotely. Given the importance of social distancing in curbing COVID-19, such technologies could significantly reduce the risk of infection for clinicians. An editorial in Science Robotics discusses how “robots have the potential to be deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food and measuring vital signs.” Additionally, RPM and Chatbots can be used for symptom escalation at a distance while freeing limited resources to treat the most critical cases.
Pausing to consider ways in which these technologies and others can be consistently and rapidly embedded into mainstream healthcare practice promotes thinking toward an ideal future state. Creating a more sustainable system involves making intentional investments in the healthcare system while ensuring balance between investments and potential benefits. This will require a long-term view as appropriate and well-designed upfront investments will have significant downstream effects in years to come.
Embracing opportunities for change and capitalizing on moments that call for rapid implementation is one way we have been forced to adapt. This sense of urgency should be applied to initiating and promoting a culture that forces us to question the status quo in the use of technology, processes, policies, partnerships and service delivery models; a culture that welcomes innovation but does not always rely on new technology and instead listens to new waves of thoughts to surpass current boundaries. Along the same line, it is important to ensure that policies and procedures keep pace with the rapidly evolving landscape to allow innovative practices and technologies to be safely trialed and integrated into the system.
Thousands of years ago Hippocrates said, “It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has” and this still holds true today. It is paramount that a key focus of the system in repositioning itself is to consistently and intentionally live and breathe the principle of patient-centered care. It is essential that this is the primary driving force and the heartbeat of the healthcare system to create truly sustainable, equitable and quality care.
While the COVID-19 pandemic presents a formative moment not just for the Canadian health system but for healthcare across the world, let’s pause and imagine where we go next and how we can come together and collaborate toward common goals for the health and wellbeing of the population.
Photo shared from https://techdaily.ca
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Looking at training using new media, I made a list of what I’d like a game to teach. Skills to defeat AI and tyranny. Lateral Thinking. Pleasant screen environment. Bounds of when knowledge should not be public. Exhibit a better technology prototype. And most importantly, learn psychology about why the player isn’t as ethical as is desired to be. Things like self-esteem prevent people from giving up literal religious interpretations, mo money, and alcoholism. Very few people know or worry about otherwise healthy people with such affects, but it may be the flaw that leads to WMDs. I’m not sure what media is needed for such analysis remotely; maybe a questionnaire or maybe a shrink on a tablet. But you have to want to improve one’s own utility.
The UK system seems to incorporate privacy for now (it will get expensive). In the future something like quantum short wave radio can bounce around much of the world to connect the best doctor with a battlefield general. The marshes where diseases start in China are classified; but you’d want less industrial pollution and other factors that increase mutation rates; they should really have 150M people.
A near MPI system for medical imaging would see particles being injected that are able to degrade in the body after imaging; a 15nm brick isn’t as good as is smaller units that have biodegradable linkers…the resolution is enough to catch spies when you image blood flow at the precuneus, lateral thinking with the PFC, and eventually expert knowledge memory. In all, you can’t just invest to remove dangers and include people who might make WMDs. You have to remove and restrict some things, it is why proxy wars are always in the news.
Interesting
Problems with an open system are assassinations and loss of privacy/personal-safety. An atypical disease was noted in China a week earlier published where the AI doesn’t look. We would’ve had to catch it Dec 1st with an aggressive military team ready to respond in hours, in much of the West. The robots and AI will eventually target us, though you can’t fly to the stars without robots and AI.
I see different manufacturing faculties being able to make products for different emergencies. When we are preventing emergencies and dealing with them, the economy is different. We should act to make all the machine tools we need for disasters, especially where demand for the non-emergency product has tanked. And stockpile storage space and parts like turbine blades for VTOL jets that are specialized enough.
Some leaders and military will barely see enough to socially distance in time or stop a meltdown. Some 2120 ones would stop Covid-19 in November and have the 9-11 planes shot down en route.
I think we should pay people for medical trials where they can achieve a Bucket List and to the 3rd world where they can be educated/socialized/treated here. I think we should use medical imaging advances, like magnetic nanoparticle filter implants, along with a better training curriculum to teach lateral thinking. Ultimately, we will cure diseases safely when leaders aren’t religious and are seeking excellence. Right now, only beeswax isn’t blatantly toxic for drug delivery and gene therapy of better surfaces would lead to new chemical WMDs. Right now a bug kills the health database concept, let alone classified WMD data.