Artificial Intelligence (AI) – although still in its infancy in healthcare – has huge potential to address the region’s skill shortages in the long term.
A key benefit of AI for the healthcare sector is its ability to automate routine, time-intensive tasks, thus freeing up medical professionals to use their skills where they can make the biggest difference to patient outcomes.
It can also rapidly analyze data and ‘learn’ as it goes along – delivering more targeted and precise results.
Monitoring vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure can be done in real-time and more frequently with AI too, compared to a manual process. As a result, care teams can be alerted sooner to changes in these vital stats, which can be the difference between life and death for patients in critical care. Additionally, it also enables monitoring of more patients at the same time, both within and outside care facilities.
Diagnosis is another area where AI could alleviate skills shortages in the future. Analyzing medical reports and X-rays can be a time-intensive activity for medical professionals. AI has the potential to greatly improve efficiency in diagnosis by analyzing vast quantities of data far quicker than the human mind ever could, comparing it with thousands of scans to provide an accurate diagnosis in seconds.
This is particularly beneficial to some countries, as it allows them to easily compare their results to, and access information from, some of the world’s best doctors to make quicker, more accurate diagnoses – something that was previously not available to them. The result – a much more efficient assessment process and more often correct first-time diagnoses.