This appeared last week:
03 April 2024
Australia entering ‘extraordinary epoch’ of AI in healthcare
AI apps could transform clinical workflows and patient outcomes across aged care, disability, radiology and primary care, according to the CSIRO.
The rise of natural language processing and generative language models across AI applications in healthcare has taken Australia’s health sector into an “extraordinary epoch”, according to a new report from the CSIRO.
The AI Trends for Healthcare report highlighted numerous opportunities and challenges to further integrating AI technologies in healthcare, including several initiatives being led by the CSIRO to implement AI across aged care, disability, medical imaging and clinical decision support.
One example included using natural language processing alongside the GPT-3 generative language model to build a natural language interface, OntoGPT, designed to streamline how users navigate information stored on SNOMED CT.
According to the report, the rise of natural language interfaces and generative language models presenting the opportunity to strengthen clinical decision-making and reduce administrative workloads for clinicians as well as improving patient outcomes
“These technologies represent an extraordinary epoch in medicine, where machines will be able to lighten the administrative load for clinicians, offer therapeutic support through chatbots that can take histories and offer education to patients, and enable improved clinical decision making,” the authors said.
“This, together with their ability to enhance patient care when they are linked to electronic records via SMART on FHIR represents a potentially rich and impactful research and implementation opportunity for CSIRO.”
Other CSIRO-led AI initiatives included developing smart homes integrated with mobile health apps and clinician platforms to support chronic conditions, improving preventative risk management such as falls prevention and enhancing eye health diagnosis and prevention.
While the significant increase in computational power in the last decade was the “biggest contributor” driving recent advances in machine learning, the substantial investment required to support the computer servers hosting AI networks could create inequity of access among medical researchers, the report warned.
Key barriers to introducing AI into aged care included the lack of rigorous evidence supporting AI-enabled products and services and limited education regarding how to safely and effectively engage with AI tools among older Australians living in residential aged care or within their communities.
Alongside working to develop and integrate AI tools across various clinical settings, greater attention needed to be paid to strengthen the digital capabilities of Australia’s health workforce, the report said.
The authors identified a number of initiatives led by the AHERC to improve digital health education among health workers nationwide, including work with the university sector to provide FHIR training courses, as well as developing opportunities with health bodies such as Queensland Health to develop staff on FHIR-aligned activities
“While the operationalisation of the existing frameworks is not landed yet, it is important to create inclusive, interdisciplinary, and ongoing discussions across sectors to shape the regulatory processes and to size the potential of AI in a safe way,” the report said.
“To harness the capabilities already at our disposal within the health ecosystem appropriately and responsibly – it is critical that our workforce (from clinicians, scientists, system administrators etc) are equipped to identify both the opportunities, challenges, and potential pitfalls as we navigate these new paths together.”
Here is the link:
https://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/australia-entering-extraordinary-epoch-of-ai-in-healthcare/106397
Here is a summary of the report:
New report says healthcare is a winner when it comes to AI
March 27th, 2024
Our new report AI Trends for Healthcare released today, shows that healthcare is set to be the big winner in the artificial intelligence stakes.
The recent explosion in AI for healthcare has resulted from a rapid increase in compute power, as well as the availability of AI tools being developed by research centres like AEHRC in collaboration with industry.
This is not unlike many sectors where AI is taking hold. But healthcare is unique because the safety and success of the technology can mean life and death, health or disease.
We published our first AI report in 2020, at the height of the pandemic and at an epoch which will undoubtedly be remembered as the tidal wave for digital health
This report leans to some extent on the first edition especially in that we explain some of the terms and language around health AI.
What’s new is a challenges and opportunities section and a case studies section where we reveal the latest research using AI for health.
This report is not to be missed if you’re interested in how AI will be used in the future of diagnosis, treatment and management of disease.
Here is the link:
https://aehrc.csiro.au/new-report-says-healthcare-is-a-winner-when-it-comes-to-ai/
It is well worth downloading the 48 page report to see the details of what the CSIRO is up to!
They have a serious number of people (150+) and serious funding to progress some quite important work, that we don’t seem to hear all that much about – which is a pity!
David.
David, you are right, the document tells us what CSIRO is up to. It is a status report on what AI is, who is doing what, the potentials, the challenges and such like.
ReplyDeleteThese are the Trends
"We have identified four trends in digital health – each being driven by the increasing digitisation of society and the increased willingness of doctors, researchers, and patients
to interact using digital tools. All support the use of AI and machine learning in everyday life, including healthcare.
• Interoperability:
• Cloud:
• Apps and personalisation:
• Data analytics as a service:
i.e. its all about technology.
If you read the document for examples of what is being delivered and what benefits have been delivered, there are none. This one seems to be on its way, but it isn't being used yet.
"Recently, a post-doc in AEHRC’s medical imaging analysis team, Aaron Nicolson, won an international ImageCLEF award for his medical imaging captioning work, where he developed the groundwork for a multi-modal image analysis tool that can assist with clinical documentation.
Medical imaging tools like this will, once approved and deployed, maintain and improve the consistency, quality, & efficiency of clinical reporting, produce a rich textual description from medical images, provide a fast & inexpensive second reader, and help reduce teaching time"
In other words, its all about promises and potential as forecast by technologists.
On the Gartner hype cycle, it's between the Technology trigger
A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.
and the Peak of inflated expectations
Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; most do not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle