#whatmatters

GE released new videos today on the theme of “What Matters”. I loved the tagline that goes by “Technology is how we do things, People is why we do things”.

I saw them and immediately related the message to my current passion and work – imbedding AI on our X-ray devices. I’m sure all of you have read innumerable articles and presentations on how AI is going to change the world. It is obviously everyone’s “flavor of the month” :) In healthcare, many of these articles approach it from how it can improve efficiency for hospitals, make clinicians more accurate. There are also many who are challenging why AI cannot replace the physicians arguing that healthcare is both an art and a science. 

I’m saying none of the above matters. What matters in healthcare is how we impact patients. Simply put, what does AI solve for improving care to the people who are the real consumers of healthcare? I'd like to share 2 real scenarios on why AI in healthcare matters -  

1.    You have chest pain in an emerging country like Indonesia and you reach the nearest clinic but they do not have the equipment or the expertise to diagnose your condition accurately. You may be asked to go to another center or God forbid, may get misdiagnosed. By the way, even if you reach a facility that has the right equipment, Indonesia has 1 cardiologist per 330,000 people.  Imagine a simple ECG machine that has AI algorithms to predict MI's. It would definitely save lives.

2.    Move to the developed world and in a country like the US, misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis still causes mortality and morbidity in ICU’s. As per some studies, this still kills more people in the US than breast cancer. What if the feeding tube inserted last night post-surgery was misplaced? Can we afford to wait till the radiologist reads that scan by next afternoon? Imagine an AI algorithm on the imaging scanner that would detect tube position and give alerts immediately.

Let’s not forget What Matters