Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/821337
63 CIO / HEALTH IT AI in Healthcare: 6 Health IT Executives on What to Expect Over the Next 20 Years By Laura Dyrda A rtificial intelligence is gaining ground in healthcare. In 2012, there were fewer than 20 artificial intelligence startups focused on healthcare; last year there were almost 70, according to CB Insights. Additionally, the AI for healthcare sector is expected to drive overall AI market growth over the next six years, according to a Mar- ketsandMarkets report. e overall AI market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 62.9 percent from 2016 to 2022, when it's projected to reach $16.6 billion. Here, six health IT company executives dis- cuss how AI will impact healthcare over the next 20 years. Mudit Garg. Co-Founder and CEO of Qventus (Los Altos, Calif.): "Many peo- ple today like to imagine a world where AI can replace doctors. But the problem with the U.S. healthcare system isn't our providers — peo- ple fly from around the world to get treated by them. Instead, it's the ability to reliably provide an operational environment that allows these world-class clinicians to do their best work. is may seem boring and unsexy compared to the 'robo-surgeon' but it's where we have the biggest opportunities to improve the patient experience and reduce cost of delivering care. We don't have to wait 20 years to see how AI can make an impact; its results are already being felt in many hospitals today. It's help- ing improve the flow of patients through the ED, reduce surgery delays and cancellations and eliminate patient falls. One hospital alone eliminated over a million minutes of patient wait time last year. As AI becomes widely adopted, hospitals and physicians will see a massive load lied off their shoulders and burnout rates substantial- ly reduced. Instead of having to look at every bit of data and anticipate every potential ac- tion and reaction, they will be able to focus solely on those issues that require their atten- tion and spend the rest of their time dedicat- ing themselves to their patients." Charles Koontz. President and CEO of GE Healthcare IT and Chief Digital Of- ficer of GE Healthcare (Chicago): "Dig- ital health transformation is happening now. Machine learning and AI are already demon- strating its potential to drive efficiencies and improve the quality of care and will continue to be significant in the next 20 years. For exam- ple, GE Healthcare and the University of San Francisco are already putting digital health into action by developing a library of deep learning algorithms that will improve efficiency, speed and accuracy for clinicians to interpret scans and diagnose patients faster. One example is an algorithm that screens X-rays for pneu- mothorax (a collapsed lung), which can be a life-threatening condition. With this algo- rithm, the X-ray machine helps hospital work- ers quickly identify the presence of pneumo- thorax and alert the radiologist to prioritize the read in the worklist queue, potentially leading to faster and better outcomes, reduced costs and improved patient experience. Over time, insights from these algorithms can be leveraged to develop next-generation algo- rithms that will tackle more complex issues with fewer images available. is technology will get smarter and smarter, with the poten- tial to completely transform the traditional hospital and improve current standards of pa- tient diagnoses." Greg Kuhnen. Senior Director of Re- search at Advisory Board (Washing- ton, D.C.): "To quote the author William Gibson, 'e future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.' We have emergency rooms today where every bit of data captured about a patient is automatically evaluated by AI agents looking for missed diagnoses and potential disease outbreaks. Physicians are drowning in information and AI can help distill the ocean of raw data into high-quality predictions or highlight latent surprises. We expect AI agents to be deployed as integrated assistants suggesting diagnoses; tailoring order sets to a patient's unique circum- stances; projecting risks and potential interven- tions; and taking over laborious patient moni- toring and data interpretation tasks entirely." Fatima Paruk, MD. CMO of Allscripts Analytics (Chicago): "AI is the future of healthcare. In the retail and economic sectors, AI and predictive analytics have facilitated significant advancements and are seamlessly integrated to many aspects of our lives. Un- fortunately, though the technology exists to- day, we have not applied it to healthcare where it has significant potential to drive a precision medicine approach to preventive care and dis- ease management. at said, AI systems will play critical roles in healthcare within the next two to three years. e first application of intelligent systems will impact the care management of prevalent chronic diseases of populations. e next wave will leverage increasingly available patient-cen- tered health data with external influences such as pollution exposure, weather factors and eco- nomic factors to generate precision medicine solutions customized to individual character- istics. Within reach will be the use of genetic information coupled within care management and precision medicine to uncover the best possible medical treatment plans. AI will affect physicians and hospitals, as it will play a key role in clinical decision sup- port, enabling earlier identification of disease, and tailored treatment plans to ensure opti- mal outcomes. It can also be used to demon- strate and educate patients on potential dis- ease pathways and outcomes given different treatment options. It can impact hospitals and health systems in improving efficiency, while reducing the cost of care." Rajeev Ronanki. Principal in Life Sci- ences and Health Care of Deloitte Consulting (Los Angeles): "In healthcare's transition to an outcomes-based model, pa- tients are looking to healthcare to provide the same highly personalized level of customer ser- vice that is currently provided by retailers and banks. Already, we are witnessing early use cas- es for artificial intelligence in the space, which we call more broadly 'machine intelligence,' incorporated into various sectors. Specifically, one leading hospital, running one of the larg- est medical research programs in the United States, is 'training' its machine intelligence systems to analyze the 10 billion phenotypic and genetic images stored in the organization's database. In health insurance, the implementa- tion of cognitive computing will vastly improve customer engagement and customer support and change the way interaction is handled over the life of a policy, beyond just a claim. ere's a confluence of three powerful forces that is driving the machine intelligence trend: exponential data growth, faster distributed systems and smarter algorithms that inter- pret and process that data. CIOs can expect a number of ways to derive value from machine intelligence. ose opportunities include: • Cognitive insights — machine intelli- gence that can augment human decision making; • Cognitive engagement — machine intel-