Saturday 27 February 2016

Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Healthcare


Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Healthcare
by Matteo Berlucchi, CEO, Your.MD
@matteoberlucchi

London, 29 February 2016


Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently a hotly debated topic as there are fears that it is becoming so powerful that one day it will actually replace jobs currently done by human beings.

In a speech given at the Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg said that AI is not good enough to match human thought since “we are nowhere near understanding how intelligence works” but it will become crucial to a number of areas - specifically citing healthcare.

As AI continues to develop at breakneck speed, companies like Your.MD are within reach of being able to reproduce the primary care advice that in many cases a doctor would traditionally dispense.

For the record, I don’t think that AI can completely replace doctors, far from it! What I believe is that many of the interactions between doctors and patients, in particular the ones where there is only an exchange of information, could be replaced by an automated solution based on AI.

This way, doctors could be relieved from a lot of the pressure they are experiencing today and could have more time to focus on patients with more serious issues. In the UK alone it is estimated that around 60 million doctor consultations every year involve minor ailments which could be handled through self-care (NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning).

The free service that Your.MD is developing (already available in beta from http://get.your.md) will assist doctors worldwide and help hundreds of millions of people at the same time.

Information Is The Cure!
When you are not well you typically require 3 things:

  1. Find out what’s wrong with you
  2. Get trustworthy information on your condition (often this is enough to get healthy)
  3. Get actionable advice to get well again

Until now, the only source of this information is your doctor.

The AI Personal Health Assistant developed by Your.MD - the first of its kind - can offer the same 1,2 and 3 for all those who need it, when they need it.

1. Personalised - With Artificial Intelligence
In the majority of cases, and given sufficient initial information, our AI system is able to understand the unique problems of patients and their personal probability of suffering from a specific condition. Thus, our AI makes the information highly personalised.

2. Trustworthy - NHS Choices Advice
Your.MD has collaborated with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to provide best in class advice and information to its users. Uniquely, this information is both clinically assured and written by journalists to be more accessible to the general public.

3. Actionable - A Health Marketplace
Once you know what may be wrong with you, you need to find the best, most suitable and safest service providers to help you get the right prescription drugs, get a blood test, or perhaps see the best specialist. We are building a health marketplace (launching next month) which will enable people to find the best services and products in their local area.

The Real Value of Artificial Intelligence
I believe companies like Your.MD will have a huge impact in both emerging and developed economies.

Access to healthcare is a fundamental human right, yet in emerging markets half of the population has no direct access to a healthcare professional. Your.MD can fill this enormous void, putting relevant and trustworthy information in the hands of anyone with a mobile phone.

On the other hand, in the developed economies, Your.MD can help to fill the huge gap between the demand for health services and the supply. With only 4 doctors and nurses to every 1,000 people (New England Journal of Medicine, 2014), waiting times to see a healthcare professional can be as high as 18.5 days in major US cities (Washington Post).

Since it’s very slow and expensive to increase the supply (the number of doctors), Your.MD can dramatically reduce the demand by servicing hundreds of millions of people so they don’t have to visit a doctor in the first place.

Your.MD can change the economics of a country’s national health service at virtually no cost. This is transformational.

Help Us Help Everyone
You can help us make this dream a reality in a very simple way: download our app from http://get.your.md, use it and tell your friends to do the same.

Through machine learning, all anonymised data logs are collected and added to the system. This means that Your.MD will get smarter and more accurate at giving the best possible assistance. In a nutshell, the more you use it, the better Your.MD will become!

Join us on this amazing journey to bring health for all.