With the allocation of most resources to the fight against coronavirus, it is not surprising to see more technologies being applied to aid healthcare workers. In Royal Bolton Hospital in the UK, they are fast tracking the use of a tool called Qure.ai which will assist in the reading of chest x-rays. This has been soft implemented in the hospital for a while as the doctors wanted help with checking the work of trainees. After months of ensuring the decision of the AI matches that of the doctor, they feel safe applying this to more scans with less supervision. This will help immensely with keeping up with tasks during a worker shortage with the influx of cases that come with the current pandemic.
Not only is this helping in a crisis, but some believe allowing AI such as these to enter hospitals now will lead to a change in protocol from now on. For example, should it prove consistently reliable Qure.ai probably will not leave the hospital. The inclusion of such programs will continue to help ease the workload of doctors and keep the flow of testing analysis moving faster than ever. But of course with this comes some risk of misdiagnosis since computers are not infallible. But hopefully we will find they are overwhelmingly helpful so hospitals can benefit from their use.
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This is an interesting use of technology! I can definitely see AI like this becoming more common in hospitals to help reduce workloads of doctors. Eventually, AI diagnoses will probably be more accurate than a human doctor's would be. It will be interesting to see how many changes in technology hold over from this pandemic. In addition to more robots in hospitals, will we become more comfortable with doing other things with technology rather than in person?
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