Artificial intelligence could be the trigger for a new age of healthcare, say scientists, where treatment is tailored to each individual patient
In the race to reimagine healthcare and usher in a new era of personalised medicine, artificial intelligence, or AI, is a critical piece of the puzzle. From tailoring drugs to an individual's genetic makeup, to using machines to spot cancers in medical images, or filtering reams of health data to shape diagnoses and pick out disease patterns, AI is set to underpin the future of medicine.
"I do believe that AI and machine learning has the capacity to hugely enhance our ability to diagnose illnesses and to understand how to treat them better," Prof Sir Malcolm Grant, the chairman of England's national health service (NHS) told BBC Radio 4's Inside Science programme. Gaps in understanding could be filled with the support of AI, able to compare hundreds of thousands of patient records and identify common causes of disease, he explained.
"[AI] has an enormous potency to personalise medicine and to get us away from current practice where we tend to use one set of pharmaceutical products to benefit 20 or 30 per cent of the population."
It's a vision shared by many. Scientists at the US-based Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are trialing AI as a way to mine big data – from health records, to prescription data, insurance data and more – and put it to work in real life. The findings could lead to the creation of new diagnostic tests, help stave off epidemics or shape designer drugs for individual patients. The project, known as the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance, will receive up to $20m a year over the next six years in funding, and is aiming high.
"We will change the practice of medicine," the team behind the alliance say in a statement on their website. "The future of healthcare is in the data."
