🔗 Share this article

A senior citizen grew accustomed to receiving Aida's regular check-in at 10am.

A daily check-in call by an automated voice assistant was not part of the care package Rolls expected when she enrolled for St Vincent’s in-home support but when they asked to be part of the trial several months back, the elderly lady agreed because she wished to contribute. Even though, to be honest, her hopes weren't high.

Nevertheless, when she got the call, she says: “I was amazed by how responsive she was. It was impressive for a robot.”

“The system would inquire ‘how you are today?’ and that gives you an opportunity if you feel unwell to say you felt sick, or I just say ‘I'm well, thanks’.”

“The AI would then pose questions – ‘have you had a chance to step outside today?’”

The virtual assistant would also inquire about what the user was planning for the day and “it would reply appropriately.”

“If I would say I plan to go shopping, she’d say nice shopping or food shopping? It was quite engaging.”

AI Reducing the Administrative Burden on Medical Staff

This pilot, which has now wrapped up its initial stage, is one of the ways in which progress in AI technology are being integrated in the medical field.

Digital health company the provider partnered with the care organization regarding the program to utilize its advanced AI system to offer companionship, along with an option for elderly recipients to report any medical concerns or issues for a staff member to address.

Dean Jones, head of the home care division, explains the service under evaluation is not a substitute for any in-person visits.

“Recipients continue to get a regular personal visit, but between these meetings … the automated system allows a daily check-in, which can then escalate any possible issues to either our team or a client’s family,” the director notes.

The managing director, the managing director of Healthily, reports there have been no any negative events reported from the St Vincent’s trial.

Healthily employs open AI “with strict safety protocols” to guarantee the conversation is safe and mechanisms are established to address serious health issues promptly, the director states. For example, if a client is reporting chest pains, it would be flagged to the care team and the call terminated so the person could dial triple zero.

Campbell thinks AI has an important role amid staffing shortages across the healthcare sector.

“What we can do very safely, with technology like this, is reduce the administrative load on the staff so trained clinicians can concentrate on doing the job that they’re trained to do,” she says.

AI Not as New as You Might Think

An expert, the founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, explains established types of AI have been a common feature of medicine for a long time, frequently in “administrative functions” such as analyzing scans, ECGs and pathology test results.

“Software that performs a function that involves decision making in certain aspects is AI, regardless of how it accomplishes it,” states Coiera, who is additionally the director of the health informatics center at a leading university.

“If you go the imaging department, radiology department or diagnostic laboratory, you’ll see software in equipment doing just that.”

In recent years, advanced versions of artificial intelligence called “machine learning” – an algorithmic approach that enables algorithms to analyze extensive datasets – have been used to interpret diagnostic scans and improve diagnosis, Coiera notes.

Recently, a screening service became Australia’s pioneering public health initiative to adopt machine reading technology to support specialists in interpreting a specific set of breast scans.

They are advanced systems that continue to need a specialist doctor to evaluate the findings they might suggest, and the accountability for a clinical judgment sits with the medical practitioner, the professor emphasizes.

AI’s Role in Early Disease Detection

A research center in Melbourne has been collaborating with scientists from UCL London who pioneered AI methods to identify neurological lesions known as focal cortical dysplasias from MRI images.

These abnormalities trigger epileptic episodes that often cannot be controlled with medication, meaning surgery to remove them becomes the only treatment available. But, the procedure can only be performed if the surgeons can locate the affected area.

A study recently released in the journal Epilepsia, a team from the institute, headed by specialist Emma Macdonald-Laurs, showed their “AI epilepsy detective” could detect the lesions in nearly all of instances from advanced imaging in a subtype of the malformations that have traditionally been missed in more than half of patients (60%).

The AI was developed using the images of a group of individuals and then evaluated with pediatric cases and adult patients. Of the 17 children, 12 had surgery and 11 are now seizure free.

The tool employs AI algorithms comparable with the breast cancer screening – flagging suspicious areas, which are subsequently reviewed by experts “speeding up the process to get to the answers,” Macdonald-Laurs explains.

She stresses the team are still in the “early phases” of the project, with a further study required to get the technology heading towards real-world use.

A leading neurologist, a neurologist who was independent from the study, says modern imaging now produce such vast quantities of detailed information that it is challenging for a person to go through it accurately. So for doctors the challenge of locating these lesions was like “identifying the needle in the haystack.”

“This illustrates of how AI can assist clinicians in making earlier, precise identifications, and has the ability to improve surgical access and outcomes for children with treatment-resistant seizures,” the professor says.

Disease Detection in the Future

Dr Stefan Buttigieg, the deputy head of the European Public Health Association’s AI health division, explains advanced AI systems are also helping to monitor and predict epidemics.

The expert, who presented last month at the Public Health of Australia’s conference in Wollongong, gave as an example a tech firm, a company set up by infectious disease specialists and which was one of the first organisations to identify the Covid-19 outbreak.

Generative AI is a further subset of machine learning, in which the system can produce original material based on existing information. These uses in medicine encompass programs such as the virtual assistant along with the automated note-takers clinicians are adopting more.

A GP representative, the head of the Royal Australian College of GPs, says GPs have been adopting digital assistants, which records the consultation and converts it to a consultation note that can be added to the health file.

Wright says the primary advantage of the tools is that it improves the standard of the interaction between the doctor and patient.

Dr Danielle McMullen, the chair of the national doctors' group, concurs that scribes are assisting physicians optimise their time and adds artificial intelligence can also help to help doctors avoid repeated examinations and scans for their clients, if the {promised digitisation|planned digitalization