Over the years, technological advancements in medicine have helped hospitals and healthcare providers offer a higher standard of patient care and deliver better patient outcomes.
Now, AI in medicine and healthcare is the next step in this frontier, with hospitals leveraging the latest developments in artificial intelligence to do everything from improve staff training to aid doctors and surgeons as they work. A number of papers have already been published on how AI in healthcare and pharma is transforming the practice of medicine, and the latest statistics on AI in healthcare showcase the incredible impact this technology can make:
AI in Healthcare Statistics:
- 81% of NHS staff have expressed support for AI use for administrative tasks in healthcare settings. (SkillsForHealth)
- 54% of the UK public and 76% of NHS staff surveyed said they support the use of AI for patient care. (The Health Foundation)
- 28% of GPs are already reporting current AI use in clinical practice. (SkillsForHealth)
- Healthcare organizations have either fully embedded or are in the final stages of implementing AI tools into patient scheduling and waitlist management (55%), pharmacy services (47%) and cancer services (37%). (Blueprism)
NHS: AI for Essential Communication Training
Bromley Healthcare provides essential NHS community health services across South East London, supporting patients of all ages through community nursing, therapies, health visiting, and Hospital at Home services.
Working with VirtualSpeech, they explored immersive AI workplace communication training scenarios designed to help staff practice emotionally challenging conversations, including:
- Handling end-of-life care conversations with patients and family
- Supporting staff on how to deal with emotional or frustrated callers
It goes without saying that discussing end-of-life care is never easy, even for healthcare professionals who face this task regularly. Whether delivering difficult news to family and friends or speaking with older people in care environments, healthcare professionals need to balance empathy, clarity, and emotional sensitivity. Immersive roleplay training with VirtualSpeech helps Bromley’s teams to practice these challenging conversations in realistic scenarios before facing them in the real world.
Bromley are also leveraging VirtualSpeech AI training to train their staff on handling emotional or frustrated callers. These conversations are part of everyday work for NHS staff — especially around waiting list times and delays. These interactions can be stressful, particularly for staff with limited experience handling emotionally charged situations over the phone. Using immersive AI roleplay scenarios, Bromley’s teams can practice difficult conversations in realistic but psychologically safe environments.
Imperial College London: AI-Assisted Imaging and Diagnosis
Professionals at the Imperial College of London have been working to leverage the incredible pattern recognition ability of today’s AI technology to assist clinicians with diagnosing patients with illnesses earlier – helping catch even hard-to-recognize before clinicians would otherwise be able.
For example, the model has been trained to be able to predict lung cancer from primary care patient data collected up to three years before a lung cancer diagnosis, giving clinicians using this technology now have achieved a good level of prediction, with work now under way to include other cancers as well.
On the power of this AI to save lives with advanced warning, Imperial College London Professor Daniel Ruekert wrote that “even an experienced doctor may not have seen all types of cancer. Algorithms can pool the data from hundreds of thousands of rare cases”.
NHS: AI Computer Vision
Computer vision is one of the more mature applications of AI within healthcare, utilizing deep learning and machine learning to identify features within x-rays, ultrasounds, MRIs, CT scans, and other medical images.
The King’s Fund explains that the NHS is already developing, testing, and using AI-powered computer vision to provide higher levels of care to patients by identifying and analyzing patterns in these images that would be difficult to notice with the human eye alone. In future, as AI computer vision develops, it will allow for autonomous systems that assess images automatically, with staff reviewing outputs and consistency of results.
This AI technology allows the NHS to advance its digitization initiatives to provide:
- Improved identification and diagnosis speed for patients
- Decision-making aid to staff to improve response times
- More time for staff to focus on other aspects of patient care
Diligent Robotics: AI-Powered Service Robots in Hospitals
One of the most impressive uses of AI in healthcare can be found in Diligent Robotics’ Moxi Robot, which is capable of completing basic hospital tasks entirely on its own. Already, this robot is capable of completing mundane tasks such as delivering medications and PPE and transporting medical supplies and lab samples. This frees up vital time for healthcare staff and leaves them to be able to focus on more urgent tasks.
Diligent Robotics’ Moxi Robot is equipped with sensors that allow it to adapt to workflows through repetition and move out of the way of humans as it operates, using AI-driven social intelligence to contribute positively to the hospital environment. The company claims that the AI-powered Moxi Robot helps address staff shortages and reduce burnout and turnover rate among nurses by removing work from their plate.
Philips: Guiding Surgeons During Procedures With AI
World-leading technology company Phillips has built cloud-based AI that can help guide surgeons through minimally invasive procedures on patients with heart disease, suffering from strokes, or other conditions requiring incredibly precise and detailed interventions.
This AI technology can, for example, analyze CT scan images to detect the telltale signs of stroke before sharing this analysis with hospital staff before they ever see the patient – leading to better-prepared surgeons and higher chances of successful surgery.
The AI can either provide data that confirms a clinician’s decision in the operating room or highlight previously hidden information that can guide the surgeon into making a more informed decision on patient intervention.
Furthermore, Phillips’ AI can track and visualize tiny repair devices through a patients’ beating heart, helping clinicians navigate in 3D with more clarity and confidence than would otherwise be possible.
Bringing AI Training to Your Organization
If you want to take the next step and implement AI-powered communication training in your organization, get in touch and find out how VirtualSpeech’s award-winning soft skills training – covering areas such as difficult conversations with patients – can support your teams like it does in the NHS.
