There are more and more uses of AI in medicine. One of his latest successes has been to correctly predict that coma patients would wake up, contrary to the opinion of doctors.
In China the commitment to artificial intelligence is decided. And within this technology, one of the areas that stands out is that of medicine. Not surprisingly, the Asian country has an interest in it. An artificial intelligence cannot replace the work of a physician, at least in its entirety. But yes you can perform some tasks.
The situation in China is delicate as far as health is concerned. The country has an average of 1.5 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. It’s too little. In the United States, to take a reference, it’s 2.5 doctors per 1,000. But in Spain the figure is 3.9 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. Hence the state wants to give a boost to AI to perform some of the functions of doctors, especially in rural areas. That’s where doctors are most scarce.
The interest here is to train the algorithms so that be able to discover repetitive patterns. From there an AI can issue a diagnosis. These are, in principle, relatively simple matters, such as evaluating an ultrasound or X-ray.
This operation is basically what the AI system created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the PLA General Hospital in Beijing also does. It took eight years to refine the algorithmic model, but now it has a 90% success in their forecasts. This is what they have verified with the tests carried out in recent months.
But this AI system has faced a considerably more complex task than evaluating an ultrasound. I had to predict the chances of several coma patients waking up again.
You’ve done admirably well. Better than the doctors themselves. These had given low scores in their analysis to seven patients. This means that in their informed opinion they would not wake up. However, these same patients were given a high score by AI. And they ended up waking up.
The system has also made some mistake. There was one patient who both the doctors and the AI found evicted, but he woke up in less than a year.
Artificial intelligence as a source of diagnosis
The algorithm developed by Beijing scientists gives an idea of the possibilities of artificial intelligence in medicine. And is that it’s not the first time an AI outperforms top doctors in their predictions.
In a competition held in China, a team of 15 physicians faced an algorithm. The goal was to diagnose brain tumors and the expansion of a subdural hematoma by evaluating scan images. The AI was 87% correct and the doctors 66% correct.
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