A panel of industry stakeholders predicts that the healthcare industry is going to transform in the next five to ten years, largely because of growth in technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).
The topic was discussed during a panel called “Will Artificial Intelligence Define the Healthcare Industry of Tomorrow?” as part of the Leaders in Global Healthcare & Technology (LIGHT) Forum, May 9, 2018.
The panel included George Halvorson, the chair and CEO of the Institute for InterGroup Understanding; Dhanurjay “DJ” Patil, PhD, the former U.S. Chief Data Scientist, U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy; Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the Chairman Emeritus at Nestlé S.A.; Bill George, a Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School; George Halvorson, Chair and CEO of the Institute for InterGroup Understanding; and Omar Ishrak, PhD, the CEO of Medtronic.
During the panel, the experts discussed how the future of healthcare will largely be shaped by how technology in AI advances.
“We are definitely on the cusp of a golden age for healthcare because healthcare is a data-based industry, business profession and we are about to have access to more data than we’ve ever had in better and more convenient ways,” George Halvorson, the chair and CEO of the Institute for InterGroup Understanding, said during the panel. “I think we are a relatively short distance away from having machines doing the majority of the diagnosis and the majority of the interpretations and the majority of the scans and that the doctors are going to be a support process to that.”
Ishrak predicted that robotics would continue to be utilized to improve surgery in the very near future. He said by utilizing robotics, minimally invasive surgeries will be sped up and the outcomes will become more standardized.
Advancements in AI could also result in more simplistic changes in healthcare, said Patil. He predicted that in the next five years, the biggest impact AI will have will be its ability to streamline clerical work and fast-track how doctors and patients use data.
“We often look for the sexy problems, but it is the super boring stuff,” he said. “That stuff is where the huge lift will happen over the next five years.”
Patil predicted that the more radical changes would occur more in the 40-year range than in the short-term.
Learning from other industries
Patil said there has also been a lag in technology growth in the healthcare industry when compared to advancements in other industries like automotive. For example, he said advances in autonomous cars could also be useful in healthcare.
“The technology is here, it is just not in healthcare at the pace for which you would expect,” he said. “Why don’t we see that pace and clip of the technology being implemented in health care.
“I think there is incredibly innovative stuff happening but how do we drive that technology to radically disrupt clinical care now? I fundamentally believe we can do substantially more,” Patil added.
Patil also mentioned tools like Google Voice, which can be used to make reservations at a restaurant, should be outfitted so that patients can easily make doctors’ appointments.
Taking advantage of data
One of the main topics during the discussion was what the future of data will do to the healthcare industry.
Halvorson explained that in the future doctors and patients will have significantly more information and data on the individual patient at their fingertips, allowing both parties to to be more informed on specific diseases that can help them construct a personalized healthcare plan.
New AI systems, including some that are already in place, keep track of doctors and healthcare provider’s information on a personally tailored health plan. For example, if a patient lets a prescription lapse and does not fill it, the healthcare officials can be alerted.
While was mostly positive regarding the role of AI in shaping the future of healthcare, there are still challenges that need to be decided on from an industry level before the technology is ready for prime time.
Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and the former chairman and CEO at Medtronic, said it is still unknown who exactly owns a patients data, including doctors notes. Privacy is an issue that will have to tackled before AI can be fully deployed to analysis patient data, he said. Brabeck-Letmathe agreed that the potential role of AI is not yet fully understood.
“There is enormous room for improvement and I believe that AI can be very helpful,” said Brabeck-Letmathe. “The technology is here, the question is going to be when in this process are you going to allow the AI to be the external intelligence.”
Watch the full panel here.
