AI can transcribe clinical notes, draft MyChart messages, interpret X-rays and…well, what else can it do?
As AI gains popularity in the health care industry, the terms “ambient scribe” and “in-basket automated response” have ascended with it. The recognition is well-deserved—these tools have had enormous impacts on patients, physicians and the health systems that facilitate care. But although these are common, they aren’t the only notable AI applications in health care.
Newsweek connected with health tech leaders to uncover the unconventional AI tools that are solving issues across the industry. Here are four of their stories.
Improving Public Health
Dr. Jude Kong grew up in Shiy, a tiny village in the northwestern region of Cameroon. The nearest hospital was about four hours away and had one doctor on staff.
If somebody was sick in the village, they self-medicated to the best of their ability. If somebody was dying, they would usually have to be carried to the hospital, as there were only two cars in the community. It was common for people to die on the trip, Kong told Newsweek.
The women in Kong’s community came together to help his mom support him through school. He became the first from his village to attend secondary school, then high school, then university. He had his first doctor’s appointment while studying in Italy.
Now, Kong is a professor and the director of the AI and mathematical modeling lab at the University of Toronto. He also leads the Africa-Canada AI & Data Innovation Consortium and the Global South AI for Pandemic & Epidemic Preparedness & Response Network.
Collaborating with locals and governments alike, Kong uses AI to customize proactive tools that can improve public health and care access in communities like Shiy.
“With me, I always have my community, the dynamics, how we self-medicate and the reason why we self-medicate,” he said. “People tend to normalize that as a way of living, but in fact, that should not be the way of living, because I’ve seen how things could be done.”
His work has helped communities around the globe. An AI model in Ethiopia can analyze photos to determine whether a patient’s paralysis is indicative of polio. In Peru, an AI-powered breathalyzer can diagnose respiratory disease. In South Africa, an air-quality monitoring tool uses AI to quantify greenhouse gas emissions around mines—community members can now prove that certain areas are dangerous and can use that data in court, Kong said.
These tools aren’t designed to be scaled. They’re built and trained to target specific problems for a specific group of people—problems and people that health systems often neglect, according to Kong. His organizations include local communities and researchers from the concept phase to implementation, fostering trust in the novel technology.
“When you bring people along and they co-create [AI], you don’t need to sell it to them,” Kong said. “They adopt it.”
Bringing ‘Symphony’ to Surgery
Dr. Robert Masson had always taken a futuristic approach to his neurosurgery practice, innovating spine surgery procedures and incorporating robotics. But he noticed that most technological products were focused on surgeons’ performance and capabilities, neglecting the teams that work alongside them.
He set out to change that with eXeX, the AI company he leads as CEO.
“We wanted to solve through the lens of something more macro,” Masson told Newsweek. “We looked at the whole team and thought, How can we improve the symphony of surgery?”
There are thousands of tools and dozens of pieces of equipment in the operating room, but there aren’t checklists or databases in the sterile environment. Every little detail that is missed is an “expense, an interruption,” Masson said.
The eXeX AI tool aims to increase communication, clarity and orientation within the surgical suite—which, in turn, could ease the pressure to rely on memory.
The product incorporates a language model with a computer vision model to answer surgical teams’ questions during a procedure and help them orient themselves in the room. The system is linked to a headset spatial-computing app and can use the camera-access functionality on the Apple Vision Pro.
“The app running on the headset has a full spatial awareness in the room in real time, and it understands exactly where the user is and even knows what the user is looking at,” Nicholas Cambata, COO of eXeX, told Newsweek. A surgical tech could set up a tray before surgery and ask the AI to check it; in turn, the AI could identify any missing tools and tell them exactly where to find those tools in the room.
The AI model is fully customizable, Cambata said, trained on each surgeon’s individual workflow and each operating room’s unique floor plan. EXeX just went commercial at its first hospital system, but Masson said the product has already been game-changing in his own practice.
“Having this real-time virtual checklist in the field, it was like nirvana,” Masson said. “It was just stress-free, effortless team-flow state.”
Speeding Up the Imaging Process
Radiology dominates the health care AI market, accounting for 76 percent of FDA-approved AI and machine-learning offerings. Many of these tools can help read and interpret scans, but they have other applications as well, according to Dr. Elisabeth Garwood, chief medical information officer and vice chair of AI and clinical innovation at UMass Memorial Health.
UMass runs at least 40 AI algorithms in its clinical workflows, making the imaging process more efficient for doctors and patients, Garwood told Newsweek. One prioritization algorithm flags exams that appear abnormal, so critical patients get results faster. Another AI-powered billing software automatically codes “easier” cases so medical coders—who are in short supply—can focus on tougher cases.
Patients have noticed that they’re spending less time in the MRI machine thanks to the health system’s acceleration algorithms, Garwood said. It takes time to acquire enough data to create a clear picture of the anatomy, and the image can be grainy if the machine is pushed to go faster. But machine-learning algorithms can process accelerated data, reconstructing high-quality diagnostic images in less time.
Up to 15 percent of patients experience severe forms of anxiety during MRIs, causing approximately 1 in 10 scans to be terminated. AI is helping to make the process more tolerable for patients so doctors can get the results they need.
“MRIs are long, uncomfortable and loud, but they’re really valuable for medical decision making,” Garwood said. “The acceleration algorithms at UMass are making our MRIs 25 percent faster, and that really hacks the patient experience that they’re in the MRI for less time.”
Advancing Disease Research
Kira Peikoff leads public relations for Bayer’s venture capital arm, Leaps. She works with companies that are using technology, including AI, to address major challenges in health and agriculture.
Leaps has invested $2 million into more than 65 startups over the last decade, according to Peikoff. The company takes a minority stake in the startups then works to help them advance their technology through clinical trials or commercialization. Only those with cutting-edge products make the cut.
“Leaps’ investment approach is always in early-stage companies that are pioneering a novel approach to technology, not something that’s incremental or a reformulation,” Peikoff said. “It’s got to be something that could potentially shift paradigms in that treatment or indication.”
Half of Bayer’s 10 ambitious goals, or “leaps,” are in the health sector, from “preventing and curing cancer” to “reversing autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation.” The company believes AI could further advancement toward those milestones, according to Peikoff.
EXeX will be one of many brands submitting to Newsweek‘s AI Impact Awards, which recognize unique and innovative AI solutions that solve critical issues or advance capabilities across various industries. The awards highlight measurable impacts AI delivers in various business operations, including marketing, customer experience, product development and supply chain optimization.
Entries are open until April 25, and finalists and winners will be announced in late May ahead of the AI Impact Summit in June. The panel of expert judges is led by Newsweek Contributing Editor Marcus Weldon, an AI scientist and former president of Bell Labs. Dr. Jude Kong, Dr. Elisabeth Garwood and Kira Peikoff are judges on the panel.
For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the AI Impact Awards homepage.