How AI has changed the dynamics of healthcare industry?

 

The healthcare industry has undergone a metamorphosis in recent times. The advent of artificial intelligence has dramatically changed predictive diagnosis and provided personalized plans of treatment, which has in turn improved patient outcomes. The medical processes are now channelized in the right direction. However, we have to consider biomedical ethics of AI in healthcare industry.

The delivery of healthcare goods and services, the procedures associated with diagnostics, and tremendous care offered to patients are some of the avenues being revolutionized by the advent of AI. The power of medical data has never been tapped to this extent by any other technology. Today, AI has transformed the way healthcare professionals deal with electronic patient records, diagnostic tools like imaging techniques, and genetic engineering techniques. Although medical data is vast, AI can easily peruse through it at a very rapid speed. The complexity patterns of medical data have never been understood till date.

As AI has transformed the way of data analysis, diagnosis of patients has become very fast and accurate. Algorithms based on machine learning have been developed and trained on large volumes of medical data of patients. Consequently, the diagnosis of illness can happen at an early stage, improving the outcome of treatments. In fact, personalized treatment plans are now possible due to AI. The prognosis of patients is also improved with AI.

Surgery has now become a mechanical procedure; the entry of medical robots has improved the speed at which surgery can be performed with precision. Medical robots are now assisting surgeons in medical operation theatre. Thanks to robots, minimal invasive procedures are now being performed with ease. The chances of complications are minimized and patients are recovering at a faster rate.

AI has changed the way healthcare processes in call centers are carried. Chatbots are AI-driven health assistants in the virtual world. This has now boosted the prospects of telemedicine. Thanks to digitalization of medical records and chatbots, healthcare delivery services have become very accessible and professionals are now moving beyond confined physical clinics.

Healthcare apps are powered by AI and patients can now manage their diseases by knowing more about their illness in real-time. Patient queries are solved by chatbots and appointments to physicians can also be scheduled as per convenience. Chronic healthcare issues like diabetes have self-care management apps.

In the field of research and development, AI is breaking all barriers. Drug discovery was a laborious process in the field of pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Today, AI tools have algorithms to curtail down the lengthy and costly procedure of drug discovery. AI is now predicting the structures of organic molecules, which are being used later as the active ingredient of a drug. Thus, potential candidates are being devised as novel drugs. The interaction of drugs with biological systems is now better understood with AI tools.

 

 

 

The growth of brain tumor is halted with abemaciclib: a novel new drug

Meningioma is a brain tumor that is not metastatic and occurs even after a patient undergoes surgery and radiation. In such a situation, the patient with brain tumor is left with no treatment option.

Such aggressive tumors cannot be treated with drugs. These tumors occur in about 20% of the cases, making patients disabled or even prone to death.

Currently, researchers at the Northwestern University of Medicine have collaborated with the University of California and the University of Hong Kong.

They are on a mission to develop a novel drug that can inhibits the development of meningiomas. They are the most aggressive form of brain tumors. They are also working on identifying how accurately the drug are effective in destroying meningiomas.

These scientists have developed a new drug named abemaciclib, which is an anti-cancer agent. The drug was tested successful in a human clinical trial of selected patients. It was also tested on animal model of mouse.

Moreover, a three-dimensional brain tumor was extracted from living tissues. Such a tumor was known as organoids, and the drug was tested on this organoid and other cell cultures.

Investigators created two subgroups of meningiomas as their clinical outcome and recurrence rates were different. This new method of classifying tumors was more effective in predicting the recurrence rate as compared to the existing method.

Currently, patients with brain tumor have to undergo surgery. After undergoing surgery, a specimen of the tumor is examined by the doctor under a microscope and graded according to its aggression: one, two, or three.

But gradation of tumors has only 70% accuracy level. This implies that some tumors would behave in a way that does not resemble the specimen observed under the microscope.

In this study, we identified the patient who were suitable for being treated with abemaciclib, the novel anti-cancer drug. It is highly likely that the brain tumor of these patients would respond to this drug.

According to the lead investigator of this study, the drug has the potential to give such patients a longer life that is devoid of any symptoms. Dr. Stephen Magill is the corresponding author of this study and practices neurological surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This study was published in the esteemed journal Nature Genetics.