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Peta Rolls came to anticipate receiving Aida's daily check-in at 10am.

A routine morning call by an automated voice assistant wasn't initially included in the care package the participant expected when she signed up for the home care however when she was invited to be part of the trial several months back, the elderly lady said yes because she wished to contribute. Although, truth be told, her hopes were low.

Nevertheless, when she got the call, she states: “I was amazed by how interactive she was. It was impressive for a robot.”

“The system would inquire ‘how you are today?’ and that provides a chance if you feel unwell to mention your symptoms, or I just say ‘I'm well, thanks’.”

“She would go on to ask questions – ‘have you had a chance to step outside today?’”

Aida would also inquire about what the user had planned for the day and “she would respond to that properly.”

“If I would say I plan to go shopping, it would ask are you shopping for clothes or groceries? It was quite engaging.”

Bots Easing the Administrative Burden on Medical Staff

This pilot, which has recently concluded its first phase, is one of the ways in which progress in artificial intelligence are being integrated in healthcare.

Health tech firm Healthily partnered with the care organization about the trial to use its advanced AI system to offer social interaction, as well as an option for elderly recipients to log any medical concerns or issues for a staff member to address.

Dean Jones, national director of St Vincent’s At Home, explains the AI check-in being trialled does not replace any in-person visits.

“Recipients continue to get a regular personal visit, but in between visits … the automated system enables a routine call, which can then escalate any potential concerns to care staff or a client’s family,” the director notes.

The managing director, the CEO of Healthily, says there have been no any adverse incidents noted from the pilot program.

The company employs advanced AI “with very clear guardrails and prompts” to ensure the interaction is secure and mechanisms are established to respond to serious health issues promptly, the director says. For example, if a client is experiencing chest pains, it would be flagged to the care team and the conversation terminated so the person could call emergency services.

She believes artificial intelligence has an important role given significant workforce challenges across the healthcare sector.

“The benefit securely, with technology like this, is lessen the administrative load on the staff so qualified health professionals can focus on doing the job that they’re trained to do,” she says.

Artificial Intelligence Long Established as You Might Think

An expert, the co-founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, says established types of artificial intelligence have been a common feature of healthcare for a considerable period, often in “back office services” such as interpreting scans, cardiograms and pathology test results.

“Any computer program that carries out a function that requires judgment in some way is AI, irrespective of how it achieves that,” says Coiera, who is additionally the head of the Centre for Health Informatics at Macquarie University.

“When visiting the radiology unit, radiology department or pathology lab, you will find software in equipment doing just that.”

Over the past decade, newer forms of artificial intelligence called “machine learning” – a neural network method that enables algorithms to analyze extensive datasets – have been employed to read medical imaging and enhance detection, Coiera says.

In November, a screening service became the nation's first population-based screening program to introduce machine reading technology to support specialists in reviewing a select range of mammography images.

These represent advanced systems that still require a qualified physician to interpret the diagnosis they could indicate, and the accountability for a medical decision rests with the medical practitioner, Coiera emphasizes.

AI’s Role in Identifying Illness Early

A research center in the city has been collaborating with scientists from a UK university who pioneered artificial intelligence techniques to identify epilepsy brain abnormalities called specific brain malformations from MRI images.

These abnormalities trigger seizures that often cannot be controlled with medication, so surgery to excise the tissue becomes the sole option. But, the procedure can only be performed if the doctors can pinpoint the affected area.

In research published this week in the scientific publication, a team from the research body, headed by neurologist the lead researcher, demonstrated their “AI epilepsy detective” could identify the abnormalities in up to 94% of cases from MRI and PET scans in a subtype of the lesions that have traditionally been overlooked in more than half of patients (60%).

The AI was trained on the scans of a group of individuals and then evaluated with pediatric cases and adult patients. Among the youngsters, twelve underwent operations and 11 are now seizure free.

This technology uses AI algorithms comparable with the mammography analysis – highlighting suspicious areas, which are subsequently reviewed by experts “but it makes it a lot quicker to get to the answers,” the researcher explains.

She stresses the team are currently in initial stages of the work, with a additional research necessary to advance the tool heading towards real-world use.

A leading neurologist, a brain specialist who was not involved in the study, says MRI scans now generate such vast quantities of high-resolution data that it is challenging for a person to go through it accurately. Thus for clinicians the challenge of locating these abnormalities was like “searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“It’s a great demonstration of how artificial intelligence can assist clinicians in making quicker, more accurate diagnoses, and has the potential to improve operation opportunities and outcomes for children with otherwise intractable epilepsy,” the professor comments.

Illness Identification in the Future

A public health expert, the deputy head of the international body's digital health and artificial intelligence section, says advanced AI systems are additionally used to monitor and predict epidemics.

The expert, who presented last month at the Public Health of Australia’s conference in the city, gave as an example a tech firm, a company established by infectious disease specialists and which was an early detector to identify the Covid-19 outbreak.

Generative AI is a additional branch of deep learning, in which the system can produce original material based on training data. Such applications in healthcare include programs such as the virtual assistant as well as the AI scribes clinicians are increasingly using.

A GP representative, the president of the Royal Australian College of GPs, reports family doctors have been embracing AI scribes, which captures the consultation and converts it to a medical summary that can be included in the health file.

The president states the main benefit of the scribes is that it improves the standard of the communication between the physician and individual.

Dr Danielle McMullen, the chair of the national doctors' group, concurs that scribes are assisting doctors optimise their time and adds AI also has the potential to help doctors avoid duplication of tests and imaging for their patients, if the {promised digitisation|planned digitalization