AI could potentially save the NHS £300m!

Many of you, who follow me on Twitter (@balbansal) will know, I recently shared, that I’ve been invited to talk at Oxford University.

For me, this is a big deal! – Let’s just take a moment – Oxford. University. What an institution. What a place. What history.

So, you may be wondering – what am going to talk about?

Well.. i’m going to be sharing my thoughts about AI. Without going into too much detail here – because that would a) give away what’s in my presentation and b) it’s not fair on the folk who have paid and are attending… I will be talking about AI now… and AI in the future.

There’s been a rapid rise in AI… and it’s only going to get stronger… bigger and more clever!

For those, unfamiliar with the term – AI is Artificial Intelligence.

What is AI?….

“Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks.

Most AI examples that you hear about today – from chess-playing computers to self-driving cars – rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing.

Using these technologies, computers can be trained to accomplish specific tasks by processing large amounts of data and recognizing patterns in the data.”

Or as I would say, – it’s the development of computer systems which are able to perform tasks, normally requiring human intelligence.

Now, there was a great story in the news recently – about how the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK could potentially save £300m! by using AI.

Currently cardiologists in hospitals can tell from the timing of the heartbeat in scans if there is a problem. Now even, the best of humans or in this case, Doctors, can get it incorrect – and statistics show, this could be up to 1 in 5 cases.

After the scan, patients are either sent home and have a heart attack or they undergo an unnecessary operation (I know what you’re thinking… what a waste of money… because it’s unnecessary!)

But what has happened is, an artificial intelligence system has been developed at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford which diagnoses heart scans much more accurately. It can pick up details in the scans that doctors can’t see!

It’s suggested there are around 60,000 heart scans carried out a year, out of which 12,000 are mis-diagnosed. Reports suggest, using AI… the NHS could save around £300m a year.

And this is why, I wanted to share this story on my blog. 1 – we’re eliminating/reducing errors and 2 – Saving money!… and all this is because of Artificial Intelligence.

And back to my original point – there’s some great work being done by men and women wearing white coats. They are, on a daily basis saving peoples life’s… but what if,… what if computers could help. What if, the knowledge (intelligence) they have…  was used by computer systems to perform certain tasks… which resulted in saving money… and saving, more life’s…

You’re probably wondering… how much would all this cost?

If the current trials that are taking place are shown to be a success (early indicators show, that it is performing as expected)… it would be free to NHS hospitals.