Artificial Intelligence Isn't for Winning Board Games. It's for Saving Lives

The ubiquity of using technology for technology’s sake to resolve problems that don’t even exist is well documented and the cause of lots of frustration among both consumers and businesses. Thankfully this naive behavior is being replaced with a new refreshing outlook that concentrates on how high-tech computing or automation can deliver real value or make a difference to our lives.

Rather than jumping headfirst into solution mode, it increasingly feels that our digital maturity has helped us realize that we need to understand a particular problem fully before even thinking about moving forward in implementing a fix.

Recently we had seen clear evidence of this when health workers approached technical experts for help from Google’s London-based company DeepMind. The significant challenge faced by hospitals was detecting and communicating problems with patients quickly and efficiently. Stories around deterioration and death through kidney failure, for example, should and could be avoidable. But how do you resolve a problem where the patients go home and then have problems and therefore do not get the level of urgent care they need fast enough?

There is a cruel irony that we are surrounded by instant communication on our smartphones, tablets and computers, but applications for this technology is currently lacking in the one area that it would be most valuable. A great example of solving a growing problem with technology is the use of artificial intelligence by DeepMind and their creation of a smartphone called “Streams.” It is also an early indicator of how technology is about to both disrupt and transform the healthcare industry.

It is important to remember that self-learning algorithms and smartphone applications will never replace healthcare professionals. However, it will provide them with an invaluable set of tools that will allow doctors to review test results and perform trend analyses that will alert them to any form of deterioration with patients even when they are at home.

Thanks to the increasing use of smartphones and wearables, health and fitness trackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and there is already a growing number of people who use mobile technology to monitor their sleep, blood pressure, heart rate, diet and exercise and then both log and learn from this information as it is displayed on their heath app of choice. If anyone can do this right now, it’s clear that technology will increasingly transform the healthcare industry.

We shouldn’t just view this as a group of worried well who are spending more time monitoring and self-diagnosing instead of visiting a doctor. Try and imagine how much easier and speedier health care professionals will be able to diagnose serious health issues when presented with years’ worth of personal data that clearly indicates an alteration in heart rate, blood pressure and loss of weight for example.

The most important aspect of this sophisticated technology is that the protection of the wealth of personal data is increasingly in the patients’ hands so they can decide if they want to share it with their doctor. Think of it as a Personal ePatient Record. They may also insist that their data should be kept away from insurance companies who are just looking for an excuse to raise the premiums of an individual with a higher chance of developing a serious illness.

It is fantastic to see how our digital attitudes are finally coming of age. Rather than running around like an overly excited child creating anything and everything without any real thought for long-term value, it feels like we have now grown up. We have begun to focus on creating high value to the user. Having technology resolve difficult problems and/or create new efficiency in how we operate is a good example of creating higher value. This can only be achieved when we put the tech to one side and heavily concentrate on identifying the problem itself. And we need to make sure it is the real problem and not the perceived problem.

The success of Uber and Airbnb illustrates how we are looking at what doesn’t work from our past and using technology to improve and make it more efficient by simply doing things differently. Disruption often feels like a negative way of describing the dramatic advancements that we are making as a global society.

There is an enormous potential to both change and save people’s lives through technology. Although it has been a long time coming, I believe that we are now starting to grasp the value in solving growing problems, and this should help you to see through the fog that the news brings us every evening, and begin to see a more optimistic future.

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Thanks for reading. You can find my previous Linkedin articles here, and you can also connect on Twitter at @DanielBurrus

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the World's Leading Futurists on Global Trends and Innovation, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including New York Times & Wall Street Journal best seller Flash Foresight.   

Daniel Burrus is also the creator of  The Anticipatory Organization? Learning System, a training process for executives and their teams to develop the skills to accurately foresee and take critical actions before disruption strikes.

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