Artificial intelligence simplifies the lives of patients, doctors and hospital administrators by performing tasks that are typically done by humans, but in less time and at a fraction of the cost.
One of the world’s highest-growth industries, the AI sector was valued at about $600 million in 2014 and is projected to reach a $150 billion by 2026.
AI Applications in Healthcare
AI has countless applications in healthcare. Whether it’s being used to discover links between genetic codes, to power surgical robots or even to maximize hospital efficiency, AI has been a boon to the healthcare industry.
Whether it’s used to find new links between genetic codes or to drive surgery-assisting robots, artificial intelligence is reinventing — and reinvigorating — modern healthcare through machines that can predict, comprehend, learn and act.
Check out these 37 examples of AI in healthcare.
Using AI to Efficiently Diagnose and Reduce Error
In 2015, misdiagnosing illness and medical error accounted for 10% of all US deaths. In light of that, the promise of improving the diagnostic process is one of AI’s most exciting healthcare applications.
Incomplete medical histories and large case loads can lead to deadly human errors. Immune to those variables, AI can predict and diagnose disease at a faster rate than most medical professionals. In one study, for example, an AI model using algorithms and deep learning diagnosed breast cancer at a higher rate than 11 pathologists.
Here are six ways AI is reducing errors and saving lives.
More Accurate Cancer Diagnosis With AI
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: PathAI is developing machine learning technology to assist pathologists in making more accurate diagnoses. The company’s current goals include reducing error in cancer diagnosis and developing methods for individualized medical treatment.
PathAI has worked with drug developers like Bristol-Myers Squibb and organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand its AI technology into other healthcare industries.
An Intelligent Symptom Checker
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Buoy Health is an AI-based symptom and cure checker that uses algorithms to diagnose and treat illness. Here’s how it works: a chatbot listens to a patient’s symptoms and health concerns, then guides that patient to the correct care based on its diagnosis.
Harvard Medical School is just one of the many hospitals and healthcare providers that uses Buoy’s AI to help diagnose and treat patients more quickly.
AI Deep Learning For Actionable Insights
Location: San Francisco, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Enlitic develops deep learning medical tools to streamline radiology diagnoses. The company’s deep learning platform analyzes unstructured medical data (radiology images, blood tests, EKGs, genomics, patient medical history) to give doctors better insight into a patient’s real-time needs.
MIT named Enlitic the 5th smartest artificial intelligence company in the world, ranking above Facebook and Microsoft.
Earlier Cancer Detection With AI
Location: San Francisco, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Freenome uses AI in screenings, diagnostic tests and blood work to test for cancer. By deploying AI at general screenings, Freenome aims to detect cancer in its earliest stages and subsequently develop new treatments.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Diagnosing Deadly Blood Diseases Faster
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Harvard University’s teaching hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is using artificial intelligence to diagnose potentially deadly blood diseases at a very early stage.
Doctors are using AI-enhanced microscopes to scan for harmful bacterias (like E. coli and staphylococcus) in blood samples at a faster rate than is possible using manual scanning. The scientists used 25,000 images of blood samples to teach the machines how to search for bacteria. The machines then learned how to identify and predict harmful bacteria in blood with 95% accuracy.
Zebra Medical Vision
AI-Powered Radiology Assistant
Location: Shefayim, Israel
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Zebra Medical Vision provides radiologists with an AI-enabled assistant that receives imaging scans and automatically analyzes them for various clinical findings it has studied. The findings are passed onto radiologists, who take the assistant’s reports into consideration when making a diagnosis.
Developing New Medicines with AI
The drug development industry is bogged down by skyrocketing development costs and research that takes thousands of human hours. It costs about $2.6 billion to put each drug through clinical trials, and only 10% of those drugs are successfully brought to market. Due to breakthroughs in technology, biopharmaceutical companies are quickly taking notice of the efficiency, accuracy and knowledge that AI can provide.
One of the biggest AI breakthroughs in drug development came in 2007 when researchers tasked a robot named Adam with researching functions of yeast. Adam scoured billions of data points in public databases to hypothesize about the functions of 19 genes within yeast, predicting 9 new and accurate hypotheses. Adam’s robot friend, Eve, discovered that triclosan, a common ingredient in toothpaste, can combat malaria-based parasites.
Here are six companies that rely on AI to develop the next wave of medicines.
BioXcel Therapeutics
AI In Biopharmaceutical Development
Location: New Haven, Connecticut
How it’s using AI in healthcare: BioXcel Therapeutics uses AI to identify and develop new medicines in the fields of immuno-oncology and neuroscience. Additionally, the company’s drug re-innovation program employs AI to find new applications for existing drugs or to identify new patients.
BioXcel Therapeutics’ work in AI-based drug development was named as one of the “Most Innovative Healthcare AI Developments of 2019.”
BERG Health
Treating Rare Disease With AI
Location: Framingham, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: BERG is a clinical-stage, AI-based biotech platform that maps diseases to accelerate the discovery and development of breakthrough medicines. By combining its “Interrogative Biology” approach with traditional R&D, BERG can develop more robust product candidates that fight rare diseases.
BERG recently presented its findings on Parkinson’s Disease treatment — they used AI to find links between chemicals in the human body that were previously unknown — at the Neuroscience 2018 conference.
XtalPi
AI, Cloud-based Digital Drug Discovery
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Combining AI, the cloud and quantum physics, XtalPi’s ID4 platform predicts the chemical and pharmaceutical properties of small-molecule candidates for drug design and development. Additionally, the company claims its crystal structure prediction technology (aka polymorph prediction) predicts complex molecular systems within days rather than weeks or months.
XtalPi’s big-name investors include Google, Tencent and Sequoia Capital.
Atomwise
Neural Network For Clinical Trials
Location: San Francisco, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Atomwise uses AI to tackle some of today’s most serious diseases, including Ebola and multiple sclerosis.
The company’s neural network, AtomNet, helps predict bioactivity and identify patient characteristics for clinical trials. Atomwise’s AI technology screens between 10 and 20 million genetic compounds each day and can reportedly deliver results 100 times faster than traditional pharmaceutical companies.
Deep Genomics
Finding Better Candidates For Developmental Drugs
Location: Toronto, Canada
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Deep Genomic’s AI platform helps researchers find candidates for developmental drugs related to neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disorders. Finding the right candidates during a drug’s development has statistically raised the chances of successfully passing clinical trials while also decreasing time and cost to market.
Deep Genomics is also working on “Project Saturn,” which analyzes over 69 billion different cell compounds and provides researchers with feedback.
BenevolentAI
Deep Learning For Targeted Treatment
Location: London, England
How it’s using AI in healthcare: The primary goal of BenevolentAI is to get the right treatment to the right patients at the right time by using artificial intelligence to produce a better target selection and provide previously undiscovered insights through deep learning.
BenevolentAI is working with major pharmaceutical groups to license drugs, while also partnering with charities to develop easily transportable medicines for rare diseases.
Streamlining Patient Experience with AI
In the healthcare industry, time is money. Efficiently providing a seamless patient experience allows hospitals, clinics and physicians treat more patients on a daily basis.
US hospitals saw more than 35 million patients in 2016, each with different ailments, insurance coverage and conditions that factor into providing service. A 2016 study of 35,000 physician reviews revealed 96% of patient complaints are about lack of customer service, confusion over paperwork and negative front desk experiences.
New innovations in AI healthcare technology are streamlining the patient experience, helping hospital staff process millions, if not billions of data points, faster and more efficiently. We’ve rounded up six examples of how AI is helping healthcare facilities better manage patient flow.
Location: Austin, TX
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Babylon Health is on a mission to reengineer healthcare by shifting the focus away from simply caring for the sick but helping prevent sickness in the first place, leading to better health and less health-related expenses.
The platform features an AI engine created by experienced doctors and skilled deep-learning scientists that operates an interactive symptom checker, assisting known symptoms and risk factors to provide the most informed and up-to-date medical information possible. Additionally, the Babylon Health platform features a health monitoring system to help people stay healthy for longer periods of time.
Location: New York, NY
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Spring Health offers a powerful mental health benefit solution that employers can adapt to provide their employees with the resources they need to best keep their mental health in check. The powerful, clinically validated technology works by collecting a comprehensive dataset from each individual and comparing that against hundreds of thousands of other data points. The platform then uses a machine-learning model to match them with the right specialist for either in-person care or telehealth appointments.
Location: New York City, NY
How it’s using AI in healthcare: One Drop provides a complete, discreet solution for managing chronic conditions like diabetes, heart health and blood pressure, as well as weight management. The One Drop Premium app allows people to manage their conditions head-first, offering interactive coaching from real-world professionals, predictive glucose readings powered by artificial intelligence and data science, learning resources and daily tracking of readings taken from One Drop’s Bluetooth-enabled glucose reader and other devices.
Location: Brooklyn, NY
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Kaia Health operates a digital therapeutics platform that features live physical therapists to provide people with the physical care they need within the boundaries of their own schedule. The platform includes personalized programs with case reviews, exercise routines, relaxation activities and learning resources all contained within, perfect for treating chronic back, neck, shoulder, elbow, hip, knee and additional pain in the moments when it’s most needed.
In addition to Kaia Health’s coaches and professionals, Kaia Health also features a PT-grade automated feedback coach that uses AI technology to ensure patients receive the best care possible. Kaia Health is available as an integration with leading medical professionals or as an employer-offered benefit.
Location: Mountain View, CA
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Twin Health is pioneering a holistic method of addressing and potentially reversing chronic conditions like Type 2 Diabetes through a mixture of IoT tech, AI, data science, medical science and healthcare. The company has created the Whole Body Digital Twin — a dynamic, digital representation of human metabolic function built around thousands of health data points, daily activities and personal preference.
The company’s Twin Service is dedicated to providing personalized and precise nutrition, sleep, activity and breathing guidance to each member along with medication management guidance to their physicians, creating a goal of providing healthcare with enough accuracy to potentially reverse chronic ailments.
Olive
Automating Healthcare’s Most Repetitive Processes
Location: Columbus, Ohio
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Olive’s AI platform is designed to automate the healthcare industry’ most repetitive tasks, freeing up administrators to work on higher-level ones. The platform automates everything from eligibility checks to un-adjudicated claims and data migrations so staffers can focus on providing better patient service.
Olive’s AI-as-a-Service easily integrates within a hospital’s existing software and tools, eliminating the need for costly integrations or downtimes.
Qventus
Real-time Patient Flow Optimization
Location: Mountain View, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Qventus is an AI-based software platform that solves operational challenges, including those related to emergency rooms and patient safety. The company’s automated platform prioritizes patient illness/injury, tracks hospital waiting times and can even chart the fastest ambulance routes.
CB Insights named Qventus one of its 100 Most Innovative AI Startups for 2019 based on the company’s work in automating and prioritizing patient safety.
Babylon Health
Increasing Access To Healthcare
Location: New York, New York
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Babylon uses AI to provide personalized and interactive healthcare, including anytime face-to-face appointments with doctors. The company’s AI-powered chatbot streamlines the review of a patient’s symptoms, then recommends either a virtual check-in or a face-to-face visit with a healthcare professional.
Babylon and Canada’s Telus Health teamed up to develop a Canada-specific AI app that scans a patient’s survey answers, then connects them via video with the right healthcare provider or professional.
CloudMedX
Using Machine Learning For a Better Patient Journey
Location: San Francisco, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: CloudMedX uses machine learning to generate insights for improving patient journeys throughout the healthcare system.
The company’s technology helps hospitals and clinics manage patient data, clinical history and payment information by using predictive analytics to intervene at critical junctures in the patient care experience. Healthcare providers can use these insights to efficiently move patients through the system without any of the traditional confusion.
Cleveland Clinic
Personalized Healthcare Plans With AI
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
How it’s using AI in healthcare: The Cleveland Clinic teamed up with IBM to infuse its IT capabilities with artificial intelligence.
The world-renowned hospital is using AI to gather information on trillions of administrative and health record data points to streamline the patient experience. This marriage of AI and data is helping the Cleveland Clinic personalize healthcare plans on an individual basis.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Faster Hospital Visits, Courtesy of AI
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Johns Hopkins Hospital recently announced a partnership with GE to use predictive AI techniques to improve the efficiency of patient operational flow.
A task force, augmented with artificial intelligence, quickly prioritized hospital activity for the benefit of all patients. Since implementing the program, the facility has seen a 60% improvement in its ability to admit patients and a 21% increase in patient discharges before noon, resulting in a faster, more positive patient experience.
Mining and Managing Medical Data with AI
Healthcare is widely considered one of the next big data frontiers to tame. Highly valuable information can sometimes get lost among the forest of trillions of data points, losing the industry around $100 billion a year. Additionally, the inability to connect important data points is slows the development of new drugs, preventative medicine and proper diagnosis.
Many in healthcare are turning to artificial intelligence as way to stop the data hemorrhaging. The technology breaks down data silos and connects in minutes information that used to take years to process.
Here are seven examples of AI companies helping the healthcare industry stay afloat in an ocean of data.
Tempus
a Massive Data Library For Personalized Health
Location: Chicago, Illinois
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Tempus is using AI to sift through the world’s largest collection of clinical and molecular data in order to personalize healthcare treatments. The company is developing AI tools that collect and analyze data in everything from genetic sequencing to image recognition, that can give physicians better insights into treatments and cures.
Tempus is currently using its AI-driven data to tackle cancer research and treatment.
KenSci
AI For Hospital Risk Prediction
Location: Seattle, Washington
How it’s using AI in healthcare: KenSci combines big data and artificial intelligence to predict clinical, financial and operational risk by taking data from existing sources to foretell everything from who might get sick to what’s driving up a hospital’s healthcare costs.
KenSci has partnered with some of the biggest names in tech and data science, including GE, KPMG, Allscripts and Microsoft.
Proscia
Looking At The Data Behind The Medical Image
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Proscia is a digital pathology platform that uses AI to detect patterns in cancer cells. The company’s software helps pathology labs eliminate bottlenecks in data management and uses AI-powered image analysis to connect data points that support cancer discovery and treatment.
Proscia recently raised $8.3M in Series A funding that will be used to expand deployment of the company’s digital pathology software and AI tools.
H2O.ai
AI For Data Throughout The Health System
Location: Mountain View, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: H2O.ai’s AI analyzes data throughout a healthcare system to mine, automate and predict processes. It has been used to predict ICU transfers, improve clinical workflows and even pinpoint a patient’s risk of hospital-acquired infections.
Using the company’s artificial intelligence to mine health data, hospitals can predict and detect sepsis, which ultimately reduces death rates.
IBM
Watson’s Side Gig Helping Hospitals
Location: Armonk, N.Y.
How it’s using AI in healthcare: When IBM’s Watson isn’t competing on Jeopardy!, it’s helping healthcare professionals harness their data to optimize hospital efficiency, better engage with patients and improve treatment.
Watson is currently applying its skills to everything from developing personalized health plans to interpreting genetic testing results and catching early signs of disease.
Google DeepMind Health
Alerting Doctors When Patient’s are in Trouble
Location: London, England
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Google’s DeepMind Health AI software is being used by hospitals all over the world to help move patients from testing to treatment more efficiently.
The DeepMind Health program notifies doctors when a patient’s health deteriorates and can even help in the diagnosis of ailments by combing its massive dataset for comparable symptoms. By collecting symptoms of a patient and inputting them into the DeepMind platform, doctors can diagnose quickly and more effectively.
iCarbonX
Data and the ‘Digital Life’
Location: Shenzhen, China
How it’s using AI in healthcare: ICarbonX is using AI and big data to look more closely at human life characteristics in a way they describe as “digital life.”
By analyzing the health and actions of human beings in a “carbon cloud,” the company hopes its big data will become so powerful that it can manage all aspects of health. ICarbonX believes its technology can gather enough data to better classify symptoms, develop treatment options and get people healthier.
AI Robot-Assisted Surgery
Popularity in robot-assisted surgery is skyrocketing. Hospitals are using robots to help with everything from minimally-invasive procedures to open heart surgery. According to the Mayo Clinic, robots help doctors perform complex procedures with a precision, flexibility and control that goes beyond human capabilities.
Robots equipped with cameras, mechanical arms and surgical instruments augment the experience, skill and knowledge of doctors to create a new kind of surgery. Surgeons control the mechanical arms while seated at a computer console while the robot gives the doctor a three dimensional, magnified view of the surgical site that surgeons could not get from relying on their eyes alone. The surgeon then leads other team members who work closely with the robot through the entire operation.
Robot-assisted surgeries have led to fewer surgery-related complications, less pain and a quicker recovery time. Take a look at seven examples of how robots are shaping the future of surgery.
Vicarious Surgical
Virtual Reality-enabled Robotics For Surgery
Location: Charlestown, Massachusetts
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Vicarious Surgical combines virtual reality with AI-enabled robots so surgeons can perform minimally invasive operations. Using the company’s technology, surgeons can virtually shrink and explore the inside of a patient’s body in much more detail.
Vicarious Surgical’s technology impressed former Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who invested in the company.
Auris Health
AI Robots Revolutionizing Endoscopy
Location: Redwood City, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Auris Health develops a variety of robots designed to improve endoscopies by employing the latest in micro-instrumentation, endoscope design, data science and AI. Consequently, doctors get a clearer view of a patient’s illness from both a physical and data perspective.
The company is developing AI robots to study lung cancer, with the goal of curing it someday.
Accuray
Precision Robotic Treatment For Treating Cancer
Location: Sunnyvale, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: The Accuray CyberKnife System uses robotic arms to precisely treat cancerous tumors all over the body. Using the robot’s real-time tumor tracking capabilities, doctors and surgeons are able to treat only affected areas rather than the whole body.
The Accuray CyberKnife robot uses 6D motion-sensing technology to aggressively track and attack cancerous tumors while saving healthy tissue.
Intuitive
Pioneering Robotic Surgery
Location: San Francisco, California
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Intuitive’s da Vinci platforms have pioneered the robotic surgery industry. Being the first robotic surgery assistant approved by the FDA over 18 years ago, the surgical machines feature cameras, robotic arms and surgical tools to aide in minimally invasive procedures.
The da Vinci platform is constantly taking in information and providing analytics to surgeons to improve future surgeries. So far, da Vinci has assisted in over five million operations.
Carnegie Mellon University
Robot-Facilitated Heart Therapy
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia
How it’s using AI in healthcare: The robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University developed Heartlander, a miniature mobile robot designed to facilitate therapy on the heart.
Under a physician’s control, the tiny robot enters the chest through a small incision, navigates to certain locations of the heart by itself, adheres to the surface of the heart and administers therapy.
MicroSure
Improving Surgical Precision
Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands
How it’s using AI in healthcare: MicroSure’s robots help surgeons overcome their human physical limitations.
The company’s motion stabilizer system reportedly improves performance and precision during surgical procedures. Currently, eight of MicroSure’s micro-surgical operations are approved for lymphatic system procedures.
Mazor Robotics
Spinal Surgery With Robotics & AI
Location: Caesarea, Israel
How it’s using AI in healthcare: Surgeons use the Mazor Robotics‘ 3D tools to visualize their surgical plans, read images with AI that recognizes anatomical features and perform a more stable and precise spinal operation.
Images via Shutterstock, social media and screenshots of company web pages.