Will AI Solve Healthcare Disparities?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be a revolutionary technology in many industries. For example, a key goal in healthcare is to utilize AI applications to improve health equity, ensuring all patients receive appropriate diagnosis and treatment. This week’s Domain Knowledge examines the use of AI as a tool to address health disparities.
One significant way AI contributes to health equity is by improving access to high-quality care in underserved populations. Equitable data in AI models can highlight opportunities to improve outcomes for underserved communities.
Part of the risk associated with healthcare AI is the potential for bias in the models used in developing the AI algorithm. These biases could further exacerbate health inequity. There are several ways to mitigate this risk, but the central idea is that for AI to be effective, ethics and human rights must be at the core of design, learning, and deployment. There is currently research being done on the best ways to train medical AI models, accounting for bias.
On a global scale, AI is helping deliver essential health services to less developed countries through autonomous mobile clinics and AI doctors. This is an excellent way for AI to help people in need today while also building toward functionality at a broader scale.
We can combat racism in medicine through the use of science and technology. For example, AI algorithms help address health disparities and break down barriers to healthcare equity by solving issues such as unequal testing and treatment, data and medical research bias, and institutional racism.
That’s a wrap for this week’s review of news and happenings in the healthcare AI space. In closing, I’ll leave you with an invitation to learn more about the benefits of using an AI Hub to manage multiple applications across your clinical needs and offer you a personal demo of Ferrum’s platform and growing AI catalog.
If you have AI tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share, leave us a note below, and please feel free to suggest topics you would like to see covered in future posts.
Alex Uy
Alex is a recent UC San Diego graduate with a degree in economics and communications. His focus is digital marketing, and he has a passion for technology-driven healthcare solutions.