Impressive for a Robot: In-Home Care AI Assistants Included in Artificial Intelligence Solutions Adopted by the Australian Healthcare Sector

Peta Rolls grew accustomed to receiving the AI's daily call at 10am.

A daily check-in call by an automated voice assistant wasn't initially included in the service Rolls expected when she signed up for the in-home support but when she was invited to participate in the pilot program four months ago, the elderly lady said yes because she wished to contribute. Although, to be honest, her hopes weren't high.

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

“She’d always ask ‘how are you feeling today?’ and that provides a chance if you feel unwell to mention your symptoms, or I might reply ‘I'm well, thanks’.”

“She would go on to ask follow-up questions – ‘did you manage to go outdoors today?’”

Aida would also ask 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? I found it entertaining.”

AI Reducing the Administrative Burden on Healthcare Professionals

This pilot, which has recently concluded its initial stage, is an example in which advances in artificial intelligence are being integrated in the medical field.

Digital health company Healthily partnered with the care organization about the program to utilize its advanced AI system to provide social interaction, along with an opportunity for home care clients to report any medical concerns or issues for a staff member to follow up.

A senior director, head of St Vincent’s At Home, says the service being trialled is not a substitute for any face to face interactions.

“Clients continue to get a weekly personal visit, but between these meetings … the automated system enables a daily check-in, which can then flag any potential concerns to either our team or a client’s family,” Jones says.

The managing director, the CEO of the company, says there have been no any negative events noted from the St Vincent’s trial.

Healthily uses advanced AI “with strict safety protocols” to guarantee the conversation is safe and procedures are in place to respond to serious health issues quickly, Campbell says. For example, if a client is experiencing heart symptoms, it would be alerted to the medical staff and the conversation terminated so the person could call emergency services.

She believes artificial intelligence has an important role amid significant workforce challenges across the medical industry.

“What we can do securely, with technology like this, is lessen the admin burden on the staff so trained clinicians can focus on doing the job that they specialize in,” she comments.

AI Not as New as You Might Think

Prof Enrico Coiera, the co-founder of the national AI health alliance, explains older forms of AI have been a common feature of healthcare for a long time, often in “administrative functions” such as analyzing medical images, ECGs and lab reports.

“Software that carries out a task that involves decision making in certain aspects is AI, irrespective of how it accomplishes it,” says Coiera, who is also the director of the health informatics center at Macquarie University.

“When visiting the imaging department, medical imaging center or pathology lab, you will find programs in machines performing these tasks.”

Over the past decade, advanced versions of AI known as “machine learning” – a neural network method that enables systems to learn from very large sets of data – have been employed to interpret diagnostic scans and enhance detection, the expert notes.

In November, BreastScreen NSW became Australia’s first public health initiative to adopt machine reading technology to assist radiologists in interpreting a select range of mammography images.

These represent specialized tools that continue to need a specialist doctor to interpret the findings they might suggest, and the accountability for a medical decision rests with the healthcare provider, the professor says.

The Function of AI in Early Disease Detection

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in the city has been collaborating with scientists from UCL London who first developed artificial intelligence techniques to detect neurological lesions known as specific brain malformations from brain scans.

These abnormalities cause seizures that crequently are resistant with medication, meaning surgical intervention to remove them becomes the sole option. But, the procedure can proceed if the surgeons can locate the affected area.

In research published this week in the journal Epilepsia, a team from the research body, led by neurologist the lead researcher, showed their “AI epilepsy detective” could identify the lesions in nearly all of cases from MRI and PET scans in a specific form of the lesions that have historically been missed in more than half of cases (60%).

The system was developed using the scans of 54 patients and then tested on pediatric cases and adult patients. Among the youngsters, twelve underwent operations and eleven became free of seizures.

The tool uses AI algorithms similar to the breast cancer screening – flagging suspicious areas, which are still checked by experts “speeding up the process to reach a conclusion,” the researcher says.

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

Prof Mark Cook, 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 hard for a person to go through it thoroughly. Thus for clinicians the difficulty of finding these abnormalities was like “identifying the needle in the haystack.”

“It’s a great demonstration of how AI can support clinicians in making earlier, precise identifications, and has the ability to improve surgical access and results for children with treatment-resistant seizures,” the professor says.

Disease Detection in the Future

A public health expert, the vice-president of the European Public Health Association’s digital health and artificial intelligence section, says advanced AI systems are also helping to monitor and predict epidemics.

Buttigieg, who spoke recently at the national health summit in Wollongong, gave as an example a tech firm, a company set up by infectious disease specialists and which was one of the first organisations to detect the coronavirus pandemic.

Content-creating AI is a additional branch of deep learning, in which the system can produce original material based on training data. Such applications in healthcare encompass tools such as Healthily’s AI voice bot along with the automated note-takers doctors and allied health professionals are increasingly using.

A GP representative, the president of the national GP body, says family doctors have been embracing digital assistants, which captures the appointment and converts it to a medical summary that can be included in the health file.

Wright says the main benefit of the scribes is that it enhances the quality of the communication between the doctor and patient.

Dr Danielle McMullen, the president of the national doctors' group, agrees that scribes are assisting doctors manage schedules and says artificial intelligence also has the potential to prevent repeated examinations and scans for their clients, if the {promised digitisation|planned digitalization