Generative AI in healthcare: benefits and challenges according to CIOs

The implementation of these techniques in medical care will allow the transformation of the way we diagnose, in addition to personalizing treatments, helping to identify risk factors and, in general, improving the results and productivity of the health sector.

Thanks to recent technological advances, fueled by COVID-19, AI has become an integral part of modern healthcare. Generally, medical centers are crowded with people and there are long waits to be treated. This causes the majority of patients to evaluate their healthcare experience negatively.

Artificial Intelligence can reduce these times through data scanning, obtaining reports or collecting patient information. This way, waiting times before going in for a consultation can be minimized. On the other hand, AI can constantly analyse the patient through sensors, keeping the user in control and offering much more in-depth care.

“With the use of big data and AI we are working on an AI-driven ecosystem in which we will constantly follow the full patient journey,’ says Abid Hussain Shad, CIO at Saudi German Health (UAE). “We can follow the journey of each patient before it comes to the hospital, what we want to do is reach out to our patients and calculate if there’s any disease before it.”

Generative AI can also share medical advice and data-driven information, giving patients greater access to knowledge of their health status. It would improve the experience of doctors by automating administrative tasks

“The most interesting thing is that we will be able to solve problems daily for our patients and improve our outcomes by giving people the right tools to make decisions,” explained Dr. Sam, Chief Medical Strategy Officer at Numan (UK). “AI could change the game with a preventive approach. For example, in the UK most of the budget is spent on curative treatments, interventions or medicines but a minimal amount of the budget is spent on prevention, mental health or any other thing that contributes to the well-being,” added.

In the panel the experts agreed that AI has a massive opportunity outside the health system, with AI they can study people before they have a disease, by studying their food habits, for example. Using that data and running AI on top will prevent early disease in the future.