According to published statistics, as much as 400, 000 fatalities of Americans happen each year due to medical errors. And, many of these could be prevented using avant-garde technology such as artificial intelligence and electronic sensors. These technologies could help medical professionals monitor and treat patients who are at risk, in ways to improve outcomes while maintaining privacy.
“For this, the ability to build technologies for physical spaces where healthcare is delivered to reduce the rate of fatal errors is there. Those that occur due to the sheer volume of patients and complexities involved in their care,” said an associate from the academic faculty at Clinical excellence Research Center, Stanford University.
In an interdisciplinary effort to create such smart hospital rooms fitted with AI systems to improve patient outcomes, a paper for the journal Nature in the field of ambient intelligence in healthcare co-authored by two experts. For example, AI and electronic sensors can quickly raise an alert when clinicians and patient visitors miss to sanitize their hands before entering a hospital room.
AI tools to round the clock Monitor Patients at Risk
Furthermore, AI tools can be developed to be integrated with smart homes. Here, technology could quietly monitor the weak elderly for behavioral signs of impending health emergencies. The tools can raise alert for home caregivers, clinicians who are remotely located, and patients themselves to take timely, life-saving measures.
“Ambient technologies have a number of potential benefits,” said one of the co-authors of the study. However, ambient technologies also account for legal and regulatory issues as well as privacy concerns. These need to be identified and addressed in a public way to gain the trust of patients and providers, and also various agencies and institutions that pay healthcare expenses.
