All-seeing AI
Artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize healthcare in China
There was a long queue at the diagnostic laboratory in Shanghai’s famed art and tourist destination West Bund Art Center. But strangely, the people in the line did not look tense and anxious as they are wont to when awaiting a diagnostic test. The reason for this became clear when one looked harder. The Future Diagnostic Lab was a demonstration of what labs would be like years away, a display booth at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2018.
The booth put up by Proxima, a startup providing medical imaging by using artificial intelligence (AI), demonstrated hi-tech virtual diagnosis where visitors lined up for a roleplaying game, being a doctor of the future. By simply clicking on an operation panel, these “doctors” could watch on a big screen how AI technologies facilitated medical examinations, radiography and diagnosis, even coming up with therapeutic suggestions, and all of this within seconds.
The lab displayed the virtual intelligent diagnosing of complicated medical problems like lung cancer. Once a “doctor” chose the lung module on the panel, a three-dimensional scan of the patient’s lungs appeared on screen. A red circle immediately marked out the nodules where the cancerous cells were, a hi-tech method that can save doctors valuable time, making an early diagnosis and pinpointing the areas where the disease has spread.
“With the assistance of AI, medical examination and diagnosis will be more efficient and accurate, which will allow patients to acquire high-quality medical service in a more convenient manner,” He Chuan, CEO of Proxima, said.
According to a recent report by the journal Nature Medicine, researchers have developed a new machine-learning program that can not only confirm the type of lung cancer with 97 percent accuracy, but also detect the mutant genes that cause cells to grow abnormally.
Apart from imaging diagnosis, AI technologies such as natural language processing, big data analysis and robotics also aid other applications. These range from maintaining electronic medical records to surgical robots, wearable devices and drug research, innovations which could transform the whole medical industry in the future.
The use of AI has made the healthcare industry the next gold mine for investors. According to CB Insights, a market research organization, healthcare has become a key area for the AI industry in terms of research and application. Global startup companies in this field have attracted nearly $4.3 billion financing since 2013, surpassing the other industries supported by AI.
China’s use of AI in healthcare, though a late starter, has “exploded” in recent years, Eliot Siegel, Chairman of the Medical Resource Image Center at the Radiological Society of North America, told Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald. “Its clinical application in certain areas has outperformed the United States’. Additionally, China’s overall performance in the AI industry shows little difference from the United