Artificial intelligence may seem futuristic, but experts say it’s already helping the NHS save lives every day.
Last year, the government set aside £21 million to support the use of AI-driven technology. health service.
The NHS AI Lab was established to coordinate promising innovations from government, healthcare providers, academics and technology companies.
Tara Donnelly, former chief digital officer of the NHS Englandis currently the founder of Digital Care, a health advisory company that helps the NHS scale up technology.
She told The Sun on Sunday Health: news About the potential breakthroughs of AI in health.
“For example, at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, our AI system is able to recommend the correct referral decisions for over 50 eye diseases with 94% accuracy, consistent with world-leading eye care experts.”
One of the reasons the NHS is so well suited for the use of AI is that it treats almost 1.3 million people a day.
This can mean long waiting lists and waiting times in A&E, but it’s also an advantage when it comes to AI. Because these patients generate a lot of data.
And it’s the data that the AI learns to work best with.
Tara said: “The UK is the perfect place to train AI for medical purposes, because our cities are home to populations from all over the world, and the more diverse our datasets, the more likely we are to train AI that works for everyone. Because it is suitable for creating
“The most significant impact is in imaging, with improvements in stroke treatment, eye disease, and mammography.”
Here, she reveals the AI technologies that are saving lives today and will continue to save lives. future. . .
Almost every week, there is exciting news about the groundbreaking potential of AI in health.
Tara Donnelly
Diagnosis of stroke
This year, tens of thousands of stroke patients will receive faster treatment thanks to cutting-edge AI stroke diagnostic technology.
Patients transported to any of the 11 stroke networks across the country can expect to have their brain scans quickly assessed by the e-Stroke system, The Brainomix.
Use AI algorithms to speed up life-saving time for one of the most time-sensitive diagnoses in medicine.
This is thought to have tripled the number of patients recovering from stroke.
In just one year, more than 111,000 suspected stroke patients benefited.
lung cancer
More than 600,000 chest X-rays are carried out in the NHS every month and are most commonly used to diagnose lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths in the UK.
Now, lung problems that require further investigation can be immediately flagged by performing an X-ray through AI software called qXR.
Instead of going home and waiting for an X-ray examination by a radiologist, patients identified by AI can undergo a CT scan the same day, which can reveal whether they have cancer.
radiation therapy
For cancer patients, the time between radiotherapy referral and treatment can be stressful.
Preparing for the scan can take up to three hours, as doctors need to highlight healthy tissue around the cancer to ensure it is protected from radiation.
But with AI technology Osairis, you can now prepare a scan in just a few minutes.
This technology eliminates the labor-intensive process of manually outlining healthy tissue on scans, known as “segmentation.”
heart attack
Every year, around 350,000 NHS patients undergo cardiac CT scans, which highlight dangerous artery blockages and narrowings that can lead to fatal heart attacks.
However, CT scans do not always detect microscopic strictures, and if they become inflamed, they can rupture and cause a heart attack years later.
A new AI tool was trained to use information about fatty changes around inflamed arteries to identify patients who may be at risk for this.
This generates a risk score for patients, and the study found that if the technology was used in the NHS, heart attacks could be reduced by more than 20 per cent.
pregnancy
In the UK, there are 25,000 cases of the pregnancy complication pre-eclampsia, 3,000 stillbirths and 60,000 premature births each year.
A woman’s risk of developing this dangerous condition can now be determined by The Tommy’s app, an AI algorithm that uses data from over 120,000 pregnancies.
Hormonal blood tests and scan results from a patient’s prenatal appointment are run through an algorithm to flag patients in need of treatment and careful monitoring.
AI is also used in IVF clinics in Europe, Asia, and South America to find the most viable embryos.
Clinics using this software report a 30% increase in success rates.
brain surgery
Precision is everything in brain surgery, and it is vital that the pituitary gland is not damaged during surgery to remove the tumor.
NHS surgeons are now working with an AI system trained on hundreds of videos of pituitary surgery, which can help them train for the real surgery.
Within just 10 months, AI was able to reach the same level of knowledge as a surgeon with 10 years of experience.
breast cancer
Breast cancer screening on the NHS is vital to detecting breast cancer early and saving lives, and women aged 50 to 71 are invited to have a mammogram every three years.
However, there is a 29% shortage of radiologists in the NHS, and several breast departments across the country have closed.
AI could help fill that gap. A study published in the medical journal Lancet Oncology found that an AI-assisted screening tool could detect cancer as quickly as two radiologists.
The NHS is currently exploring how to use AI in its breast cancer screening program
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