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Peta Rolls grew accustomed to receiving the AI's regular call each morning.

A daily check-in call by an automated voice assistant was not part of the care package Rolls expected when she signed up for the home care however when they asked to be part of the trial four months ago, the elderly lady said yes because she wanted to help. Although, truth be told, her expectations weren't high.

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

“She’d always ask ‘how are you feeling today?’ and that gives you an opportunity if you’re feeling sick to say you felt sick, or I just say ‘I’m fine, thank you’.”

“The AI would then pose follow-up questions – ‘have you had a chance to step outside today?’”

Aida would also inquire about what the user had planned for the day and “she would respond to that properly.”

“When I mentioned I’m going shopping, it would ask are you shopping for clothes or groceries? It was quite engaging.”

AI Reducing the Workload on Medical Staff

This pilot, which has now wrapped up its first phase, is an example in which advances in artificial intelligence are being taken up in the medical field.

Digital health company the provider approached St Vincent’s about the trial to utilize its generative AI technology to offer companionship, along with an opportunity for home care clients to report any medical concerns or concerns for a staff member to address.

Dean Jones, head of the home care division, says the AI check-in under evaluation does not replace any in-person visits.

“Clients continue to get a weekly face to face meeting, but between these meetings … the [AI] system allows a routine call, which can then escalate any possible issues to care staff or a client’s family,” the director says.

Dr Tina Campbell, the managing director of Healthily, says there have been no any adverse incidents reported from the pilot program.

The company employs open AI “with very clear guardrails and prompts” to guarantee the conversation is secure and mechanisms are established to address critical medical problems promptly, the director says. As an instance, if a client is reporting heart symptoms, it would be flagged to the medical staff and the call terminated so the individual could dial triple zero.

She thinks artificial intelligence has an significant part amid staffing shortages throughout the medical industry.

“The benefit securely, with technology like this, is reduce the administrative load on the staff so qualified health professionals can focus on doing the job that they’re trained to do,” she comments.

AI Not as New as Often Believed

Prof Enrico Coiera, the founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, explains established types of artificial intelligence have been a standard part of medicine for a long time, often in “back office services” such as interpreting scans, cardiograms and lab reports.

“Any computer program that performs a task that involves decision making in certain aspects is AI, regardless of how it achieves that,” says Coiera, who is additionally the director of the health informatics center at a leading university.

“When visiting the imaging department, radiology department or diagnostic laboratory, you’ll see programs in equipment performing these tasks.”

Over the past decade, advanced versions of AI known as “machine learning” – an algorithmic approach that allows systems to analyze very large sets of data – have been used to read diagnostic scans and improve diagnosis, the expert says.

Recently, a screening service became the nation's first population-based screening program to introduce AI analysis tools to support specialists in reviewing a specific set of mammography images.

These represent advanced systems that continue to need a specialist doctor to evaluate the diagnosis they might suggest, and the accountability for a medical decision rests with the healthcare provider, the professor says.

AI’s Role in Identifying Illness Early

A research center in the city has been working alongside researchers from UCL London who first developed AI methods to detect epilepsy brain abnormalities called focal cortical dysplasias from brain scans.

These abnormalities cause epileptic episodes that often are resistant with drugs, so surgery to excise the tissue becomes the sole option. But, the surgery can proceed if the surgeons can locate the abnormal tissue.

In research published this week in the journal Epilepsia, a team from the research body, headed by neurologist the lead researcher, showed their “AI epilepsy detective” could identify the abnormalities in up to 94% of cases from MRI and PET scans in a specific form of the lesions that have traditionally been overlooked in more than half of cases (sixty percent).

The AI was developed using the images of a group of individuals and then evaluated with pediatric cases and 12 adults. Among the youngsters, 12 had surgery and eleven became free of seizures.

This technology uses AI algorithms comparable with the breast cancer screening – flagging regions of abnormality, which are still checked by specialists “speeding up the process to get to the answers,” the researcher says.

She emphasises the team are still in the “early phases” of the work, with a further study required to advance the tool toward real-world use.

Prof Mark Cook, a neurologist who was not involved in the research, notes modern imaging now generate such vast quantities of high-resolution data that it is hard for a person to review it accurately. Thus for clinicians the challenge of finding these lesions was like “identifying the needle in the haystack.”

“It’s a great demonstration of how artificial intelligence can assist doctors in making earlier, more accurate diagnoses, and has the ability to enhance operation opportunities and outcomes for kids with otherwise intractable epilepsy,” Cook comments.

Disease Detection in the Years Ahead

A public health expert, the deputy head of the European Public Health Association’s digital health and artificial intelligence section, says advanced AI systems are also helping to track and forecast disease outbreaks.

The expert, who spoke last month at the national health summit in the city, cited a tech firm, a company established by infectious disease specialists and which was one of the first organisations to identify the coronavirus pandemic.

Generative AI is a further subset of machine learning, in which the technology can generate new content based on training data. These uses in healthcare include programs such as the virtual assistant along with the automated note-takers doctors and allied health professionals are adopting more.

Dr Michael Wright, the head of the Royal Australian College of GPs, reports family doctors have been embracing AI scribes, which captures the appointment and turns into a consultation note that can be added to the health file.

Wright states the primary advantage of the tools is that it enhances the quality of the communication between the physician and individual.

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 help doctors avoid duplication of tests and scans for their patients, if the {promised digitisation|planned digitalization