Will Future Robots be our next Doctor ?

   Would you be comfortable going in for a physical if your doctor was a Robot ?

    Source:www.fwthinking.com

Not much long ago, Researchers posted an interesting article in the Journal of Radiology. The researchers used software to analyze patients with Pulmonary Hypertension.

A serious condition that can weaken the heart, as a result of high blood pressure in the lungs.

The researchers trained the software using a machine learning strategy to analyze MRI scans and as well the results from blood tests.

The software could observe 30,000 points on the heart in motion during a heartbeat. Researchers fed 8 years, worth of data into the software representing 256 different patients.

Sadly, many of those patients had passed away. More than half of those diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension died within five years. There are treatments ranging from moderate to extreme.

But doctors can't always be sure of which path to take. The software's job is to give doctors more information in an effort to save patient lives.

The software turned out to be more effective at predicting which patients would survive for a year than human doctor.

Humans scored at 60 percent and the software hit 80 percent accuracy. Using the software could help doctors make critical decisions for their patients.

This is just one way artificial intelligence is lending a hand in the medical industry. Another is through simple Image Recognition software.

     Source: www.samadimd.com

 Well, I say simple because we see examples of image recognition in our daily lives such as social media platforms, that prompt you to tag your friends and pictures.

But teaching machines to analyze and recognize elements and photographs and video isn't easy, Then there's IBM

You might remember that IBM planned for Watson, the computer that's also a jeopardy champion to put it simulated brain power to work for the medical industry.

IBM calls it cognitive healthcare. Watson's job is to look at many points of data in an effort to find meaning in it.

According to IBM 80 % of health data is unstructured and most modern systems can't make any use of it.

Watson's ability to find patterns and links can lead to more effective diagnosis and treatment Watson can also help doctors mitigate risks to patients.

In a white paper, IBM researchers explain that effective predictive models can give doctors more information about likely outcomes of any specific course of action.

Doctors can work with patients to explore different approaches to treatment with a deeper understanding of potential consequences and side effects. 

The goal is to create the best treatment for the patient without putting them to unnecessary risk IBM is also working on deep learning strategies to train software to recognize medical problems from images like Tumors.

Johns Hopkins has run trials with doctors analyzing mammogram results with computer assistance. But it's still early days for this technology and it may be some time before it's effective enough to warrant wide deployment.

We're definitely not at the point where a machine is going to do all the thinking. These tools are meant to augment a doctors ability to treat patients.

If we ever do see a future in which machines diagnose and treat human patients, it will likely take decades of advancements in machine intelligence and robotics which can also be negative.

But in the meantime, we can enjoy the benefits of powerful computers containing the sum total of our medical knowledge which is pretty forward-thinking if you ask me.

My question to you guys this week is how long do you think it will be before we see the world's first honest-to-goodness robot doctor .Let me know your guess in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.