AI Articles and Analysis in Healthcare

The healthcare industry holds perhaps the most responsibility of any industry when it comes to ensuring data privacy. A breach in electronic medical records (EMRs) could tarnish a healthcare company's reputation, put undue stress on patients, and render the company in violation of regulations.

Generic pharmaceuticals require less research and development than their brand name counterparts. As a result, AI applications for research and development don’t seem to be the most prominent solutions for generic drug companies. That said, despite the lack of precedence, there may be many areas in which AI could help generic drug companies.

AI applications for automating processes in clinical trials are among the most prominent AI applications for the pharmaceutical industry. AI vendors are currently offering software that allows pharmaceutical companies to leverage their scientists' notes for data science projects regarding their future trials. Additionally, there are some applications which help companies segment their customers into easily navigable groups when finding patients for clinical trials.

AI applications in healthcare are becoming more common for white-collar automation and diagnostics. However, medical robotics is an area that may be marginally underdeveloped. This is likely because of regulations concerning automated surgery.

The facilitation of research and development (R&D) is perhaps the most common use case for AI applications in the pharmaceutical industry. There are numerous solutions for extracting and organizing research data from clinical trial notes and other medical documents. Additionally, there is software that can purportedly analyze data from images of drug compounds at the molecular level.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the United States is currently battling a mental health epidemic. One in every five Americans struggles with mental illness in one form or another. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioid abuse claims about 115 American lives every day. According to the Center for Workplace Mental Health founded by the American Psychiatric Association, up to 7% of full-time workers in the U.S. suffer from major depressive disorder, the economic cost of which is estimated to be $210.5 billion per year.

Machine vision has numerous use cases within the healthcare industry, including clinical solutions such as medical imaging and medical diagnostics. There are also possibilities in white collar automation such as medical transcription, which was one of the main interview topics in our white collar automation interview with the Executive Chairman of CognitiveScale.

Predictive and prescriptive analytics seem to be the most common types of AI applications at the top medical device companies. These companies, particularly Becton Dickinson, Medtronic, and Fresenius Medical Care, tend to partner with AI firms and vendors to create software that they intend to sell to hospitals most often.