New Delhi: There can be no talk about technology without referring to Artificial intelligence (AI).
It’s something that is invading the world at breakneck speed, opening up debates on the possibility of more and more humans in different work fields being rendered redundant.
In a first in the field of medicine and healthcare, a doctor clinic was recently opened in Saudi Arabia where patients will be diagnosed using artificial intelligence.
China-based medical technology company Synyi AI has partnered with Almoosa Health Group for the trial programme, which kicked off in the eastern province of Al-Ahsa, according to a report in Leaders magazine.
The aim of the clinic is to replace human doctors as the first point of contact for diagnosing and treating patients. The involvement of humans in the system is in the role of ‘safety gatekeepers’.
“AI Clinic is an innovative medical service system where AI doctors independently complete the full-chain medical operations from inquiry to prescription, with human doctors acting as ‘safety gatekeepers’ to review the diagnosis and treatment results,” the Shanghai-based company stated.
Once patients arrive at the clinic, they describe their symptoms using a tablet computer to an AI doctor called ‘Dr Hua’. The AI doctor asks the patient follow-up questions before analysing data and images taken with the help of human assistants.
Once the consultation is over, Dr Hua provides a treatment plan, which a human doctor signs after a thorough review.
In case of emergency cases which the AI doctor can’t handle, human doctors remain available to deal with such cases.
Initially, the AI doctor has been providing consultation on respiratory illness, covering about 30 diseases such as asthma and pharyngitis. The company is looking to expand the AI doctor’s database so as to cover 50 respiratory, gastroenterological and dermatological diseases.
The diagnostic data from the pilot programme will be submitted to Saudi authorities, and approval is expected within 18 months.
According to Synyi AI, the technology had an error rate of 0.3 per cent during a testing phase.
“What AI has done in the past is to assist doctors, but now we are taking the final step of the journey to let AI diagnose and treat the patients directly,” said Synyi AI CEO Zhang Shaodian.
