Written By: Sophia Desai
Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown promising capabilities in a number of professional fields since its establishment over 50 years ago. Specifically, AI within the healthcare system has maximized efficiency and patient experiences, among many other things. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many already existing inefficiencies within health institutions, however, with the help of AI, these issues have become easier to manage. AI in healthcare has huge and wide-reaching potential, leaving hope for the role of healthcare in the future to come.
AI and the control of COVID-19.¹
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Technology is everywhere. From our phones to our cars, and even our classrooms, we are surrounded by infrastructure that both enhances our lives and connects us to the world around us. Artificial intelligence, or AI, introduces a new field of technology that can inherently perform tasks similar to those of humans. According to IBM, artificial intelligence at its simplest form is a field that combines computer science and datasets to enable problem-solving in a way that combines both machine learning and deep learning.² Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are two very relevant examples of AI that are involved in our daily lives. AI has been around for more than half a century and has resulted in innovations that many of us couldn’t imagine in the years before. The field is nowhere near slowing down and continues to bring innovative ideas to the table. Within the healthcare system especially, AI has shown promising results in patient experiences and has become more popular as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tackling COVID-19
In the late 1950s, AI began to emerge within the healthcare system through application in medicine and the biomedical field. Since then, the presence of AI has greatly increased within healthcare through variables such as robotic surgeries, virtual nursing assistants, and chatbots. As a result, the opportunity for AI within health systems has only grown with the emergence and prolonged period of the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, AI shows promise in revolutionizing disaster preparedness and response management. Hundreds of both old and new practices of AI have been used to manage the COVID-19 crisis. For example, AI has assisted researchers in finding a viable vaccine through the use of numerous techniques that combined various applications of computer science and statistics.³ While this may not be an obvious application of AI, without it, scientists could still be researching for a vaccine today. Artificial intelligence has also been used to track the spread of coronavirus through the integration of data from various platforms such as Google, social media, and discussion forums.³ While I will refrain from going into too much detail on the presence of AI within the pandemic, a few other examples include CT image recognition, patient management, self-reported data analysis, and drug delivery.⁴ The immersion of AI within the healthcare field has served as a valuable asset within the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has made many health processes much more efficient and manageable.
The Problem with AI in a Pandemic
While AI holds much promise in helping overcome global health crises, there are many public concerns surrounding fairness, reliability, privacy, and transparency.⁵ According to a Stanford Social Innovation Review article, the algorithms driving AI systems are human creations, and as a result, are subject to biases that may exacerbate social inequalities and pose risks.⁶ Specifically, in relation to the pandemic, gaps and inequalities within data have led to mistakes in medical responses because of differences in patient reactions to viruses, vaccines, and treatments. Additionally, COVID-19 contact tracing using AI-powered facial recognition is said to be racially biased in terms of how it collects data.⁶ While these are only a few examples, there are several other instances where AI has led to shortcomings in COVID-19 health services.
The Future of AI
AI has come a long way since it was first developed and has shown promising results in both physician and patient experiences. Several forms of AI have been applied within health institutions and have assisted in processes from providing diagnoses to image analysis. Researchers and developers are consistently exploring possible advances within AI that will relieve public concerns and maximize healthcare experiences. With growing attention on AI, there is no doubt that the sector will be present within healthcare in the years to come. After all, who wouldn’t want to talk to Siri instead of going to the doctor?
References:
Ai and control of covid-19 coronavirus. Artificial Intelligence. https://www.coe.int/en/web/artificial-intelligence/ai-and-control-of-covid-19-coronavirus. Accessed February 9, 2022.
By: IBM Cloud Education IBMCE. What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/what-is-artificial-intelligence. Published June 3, 2020. Accessed February 9, 2022.
Arora N, Banerjee AK, Narasu ML. The role of artificial intelligence in tackling covid-19. Future Virology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7692869/. Published October 2020. Accessed February 9, 2022.
Ahuja V, Nair LV. Artificial Intelligence and Technology in Covid Era: A narrative review. Journal of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology. 2021;37(1):28. doi:10.4103/joacp.joacp_558_20
Artificial Intelligence and covid-19. The BMJ. https://www.bmj.com/AIcovid19. Accessed February 9, 2022.
Rustagi GS& I, Smith G, Rustagi I, Genevieve Smith is the associate director at the Center for Equity. The problem with covid-19 artificial intelligence solutions and how to fix them (SSIR). Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_problem_with_covid_19_artificial_intelligence_solutions_and_how_to_fix_them. Published June 5, 2020. Accessed February 9, 2022.
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