The medical industry is one of the fastest growing and expanding industries in the country, with it being one of the most prevalent for new advancements in technology and artificial intelligence. Most experts agree that the next few years will bring about an age where artificial intelligence will, to a much greater degree, actually take over an ample amount of the routine healthcare tasks that were previously done by humans.
Now, this is not to say that everyone is going to lose their jobs in the medical industry and that robots are going to take over the healthcare business. However, it is to say that the dynamics governing how employment works in the medical industry is changing quickly. Budding employees within the medical industry will have to work quickly and with due diligence in order to learn their skills promptly and with clarity to ensure that they will be considered valuable.
How AI can Help
AI is obviously helping significantly in the medical industry, or it wouldn’t be more prevalent with each passing year. Let us look at one example of how invoicing is done in the Netherlands, where record keeping and invoicing is now almost totally tabulated and organized by AI:
- No less than ninety-seven percent of healthcare invoices in the Netherlands are now digital and are processed and reviewed by AI.
- This information contains a lot more than just the medical bill. Each invoice also contains crucial data regarding the treatment, the doctor, and the hospital too. Essentially, each invoice shows a chronological summary of the patient’s experience within the healthcare facility: how it went, how long they were there for, the end result, any complications, and any future, recommended treatments.
- These invoices can be easy examined, cross-referenced, and studied under multiple categories given the storage system that they are codified with.
- A local company in the Netherlands called Zorgprisma Publiek uses AI to study and extrapolate the invoices. They use IBM Watson to “mine” the collected data and create conclusions with it. For example, with the way the AI stores, categorizes, and reviews the data, the company is able to tell if an individual doctor is making the same mistake over and over again with patients and will need to be corrected.
- The company’s AI system can analyze which healthcare facilities receive the best feedback, which offer the shortest inpatient stays, which are most cost effective compared to the treatments delivered, and which severely lack in certain, key areas.
This is a great example of using AI to significantly improve the healthcare services of an entire country. Granted, the Netherlands is a small country, but we could implement something similar in the United States on a much, much grander scale. It will take some time and some trial and error to implement such an AI program, but the benefits are worth the effort to have a totally new age method for monitoring and improving healthcare providers.
AI and Humans Working Together in the Medical Industry
There are roles in the medical field that are better suited for AI just as there are roles better performed by humans. That’s just the way it is and the way that it will probably always be. This is not something for medical professionals or students in med school to worry about. Rather it is something to be mindful and aware of.
One area that AI will probably never be able to replace is that of locum tenens. Medical staffing shortages are a real challenge in the country today and a problem is not going anywhere. Call Medstaff today at (800) 476-3275 to learn more about locum tenens opportunities.