Leveraging AI for a more patient-centric healthcare experience

Introduction to Patient-Centric Healthcare

Patient-centric healthcare is an approach that considers and revolves around the patient’s needs, values, and preferences. It differs from the traditional model in which the healthcare provider makes all the decisions on behalf of the patient. Patient centricity is undeniably helpful in obtaining more favorable health outcomes.

This approach considers the patients and their families to be participants in not just caregiving but also medical care, it therefore, encourages them to play a larger role in decisions made in this regard. 

Treatment cannot be insensitive and socially and culturally tone-deaf. Patient-centric healthcare acknowledges and values the patient’s preferences on an individual level, keeping diversity and cultural traditions in mind.

It is the patient’s right to be informed about all aspects of his or her medical care and the decisions being taken on their behalf. The patient-centric solution ensures that the information is shared completely and periodically to allow patients to make decisions supported by the information provided. 

Opacity, in this respect, is both unfair to the patient and will also contribute to a poor mental state due to the uncertainty caused by not knowing how the treatment is progressing. In addition, this approach keeps in mind the patient’s: 

• Physical comfort
• Emotional state
• Mental health
• Unique social needs. 

The particularly beneficial aspect of patient-centric care is ‘patient empowerment.’ Patients get the right to make informed decisions pertaining to their health and choices. They can dauntlessly comment, ask questions, and complain as and when required. The benefits of this approach are magnified by technologies like:

• Wireless communications
• Video conferencing
• AI is used to deliver medical care.

The role of artificial intelligence in healthcare

AI systems can process and analyze tomes of data far exceeding human capacity. This capability was instrumental in healthcare in studying enormous amounts of medical information generated by thousands of patients in each healthcare setting. With advanced AI analytic capabilities, healthcare providers simplify:

• Diagnosing diseases
• Predicting outcomes
• Recommending treatments

The healthcare sector is experiencing an AI-driven transformation with the increased application of artificial intelligence solutions in diverse healthcare settings. The changes taking place are:

1. Enhanced diagnostic accuracy: AI tools can diagnose human disease, and their indicative research suggesting can outperform or perform comparably to humans at important tasks. AI can analyze radiological images to identify malignant tumors often better and faster than radiologists more precisely themselves.
2. Correct treatment selection and developing ideal drug regimens: AI helps choose the appropriate course of action for a given illness in a certain patient and helps construct the right drug regimens for the patient, keeping in confounding factors and comorbidities. Uniform treatment is increasingly imprecise in modern medicine as individual factors such as genetics, age, gender, lifestyle, etc., can alter treatment responses significantly.
3. Better outcomes: The usage of AI can sharply improve the likelihood of positive patient outcomes by making healthcare systems quicker, less error prone, and highly efficient. With AI the disadvantage of operating in the dark or gaps in competence can be easily mitigated. Errors in treatment can be debilitating for patients and costly for healthcare providers. 
4. Reduced paperwork and greater focus on treatment: Endless paperwork is exhaustive for clinicians and not an essential part of their job. Repetitive tasks such as clinical documentation can be easily automated by AI to reduce burnout, freeing physicians to focus on patient treatment and care. Their productivity naturally increases, and outcomes improve due to the greater investment of thought and energy in medical care.
5. Can educate patients: AI can help improve patient education. Generative AI can provide clear and simple but reasonably accurate information about various medical conditions and the necessary treatment approaches. Coupled with browsing capabilities, AI applications can search and select the best physicians in each area for a given specialization. 

While this information is not by any means perfect or unquestionable, it is still an important convenience afforded to patients who may be completely unaware of the implications of the condition they are suffering with.

In Conclusion: The Future of AI in Healthcare

Artificial intelligence solutions will be ubiquitous and instrumental in shaping the landscape of the future. Since Machine learning has been the technology that forms the basis of precision medicine, advancements in it directly improves this field. 

Initially AI-driven solutions erred often or at least were not faultless enough to relied upon for diagnosis and treatment recommendations. But strides have been made in technological advancement and the levels of accuracy have significantly gone up. 

Armed with advanced AI analytics, healthcare providers can shift away from ad hoc insights to a more reliable approach. Firms can leverage AI to sharply improve:

• Customer engagement
• Forecasting
• Internal collaboration
• Decision-making across every function, brand, and market

Author Bio

The author has spent decades in the healthcare sector and has had a ringside view of the developments in public health and the field of medicine. He has observed how precision and personalized medicine have improved healthcare outcomes. He has written extensively over the last decade on augmented intelligence tools and their potential applications in healthcare.