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UAE: How doctors are using AI to help treat patients

But some experts also warned about the dangers that the new technologies could pose

Technology is changing the way doctors are approaching patients, according to experts at the Future Healthcare Summit. Diseases are managed better, doctors can focus more on patients and care is becoming more holistic thanks to new technology and artificial intelligence.

“Right now doctors spend a lot of time behind a computer taking down whatever the patient says and noting down symptoms,” said Brian de Francesca, Chief Executive Officer of Al Sharq Healthcare. “A new technology will have 12 microphones in the clinic which will record everything the doctor and patient says and transcribe it immediately. This takes away a lot of burden away from the doctor and helps them to focus on the patient.”

He was speaking at the Future Healthcare Summit, organized by Khaleej Times on Wednesday at JW Marriott Hotel in Dubai Marina. A platform for healthcare professionals, the forum discussed how to decipher the future challenges facing the industry and how to leverage the opportunities of tomorrow.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) was touted as the technology that would transform the face of healthcare in multiple ways.

Patient history

According to Christian Schuhmacher, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Emirates Hospitals Group said that AI would help doctors better understand a patient’s history.

“I think AI and machine learning will be huge in terms of documenting what the history of a patient,” he said. “All the wearables, AI and machine learning will help us predict months and sometimes years ahead of any disease actually flaring up or becoming life-threatening. So we will have to become the health and wellness managers of our patients, as opposed to just curing when something goes wrong.”

He said the challenge would be to leverage the amount of data available. “The challenge is, that now we are data-rich but insight-poor,” he said. “It's all about what we do with the data. And I think having AI telling us, look your heart rate was very high during the last two weeks, so consider taking a break. We need to leverage the data to actually change and adapt our behaviours, and wearables will play a huge role in that.”

Dangers

However, some experts warned about the dangers that the new technologies could pose. “AI can augment the knowledge of doctors,” said Dr. Riaz Khan, Chief Strategy Officer at Hosmac Middle East. “For example, if a patient comes in with a certain symptom, AI can compare it with people of the same symptoms and same age group all around the world to give an informed diagnosis of what is wrong. So for example, if a doctor asks for a CT scan, AI could say, try an MRI instead.”

He said that as long as the technology was augmenting human knowledge, it is fine. However, if someone tries to replace humans with AI, it could lead to chaos. “If the AI supersedes the doctor and doesn’t allow him to ask for a CT scan, instead pushing him to do an MRI, we will have a problem,” he said. “It is up to the decision-makers at healthcare providers to not attempt to cut costs by removing people from the equation and replacing them with tehcnology.”

Brian also warned about a gene editing softwares like CRISPR that allows gene editing. “While it could give us the technology to wipe out genetic diseases, it could also lead to biological warfare,” he said.

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