Just when we thought that market and industries have already become saturated with AI, we are disillusioned by such reports, as by Tractica, that tell us we are still in the infancy of the era that will be majorly led by Artificial Intelligence.

Tractica, a market intelligence agency that focuses on human interaction with technology, has recently published a report on “Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Applications”. As the name suggests, the study uncovers the untapped potential of AI in the healthcare industry, which according to the publisher will increase the worth of Global Healthcare AI market “from $1 billion in 2017 to more than $34 billion by 2025.”

It is amazing to observe that despite having altered the entire scenario in the healthcare sector, from antiquated and paper-based records system to an integrated and automated structure that connects patient, payers, and physicians in a more efficient manner, AI still has those untouched areas that can improve the conditions of the industry. But when we dive into the report and the incredible findings of it, we are bound to believe that the drastic growth of 3400% in 7 years is nothing but an outcome of a revolutionary technology that employs innovative ways to improve the underlying conditions in every sector.

Other important findings from the report unveil that this boom in the reliance on technology comes from the raised awareness of the value of data. Though we understand that as a species we have managed to top the evolution hierarchy just because of our ability to understand and manipulate diverse data into meaningful information, we never completely understood the significance of it, and thus never completely exploited it. This lack of exploration can be accounted to our limited ability to process the data, but with the advent of Big Data analytics and machine learning our ability to gain insights from data has grown exponentially. And now this predicted growth is nothing but a natural consequence of how technology has evolved.

That being said, there is still reticence among people to completely accept AI, and the report states that it is one of the major challenges that the experts will have to overcome. Previously, a report from RSA, too, has hinted at the growing discomfort among the public in regards to the use of AI in decision making. Now this report from Tractica reiterates that, “Physicians and other medical professionals spend years in training learning how to identify medical issues, and many are not comfortable with the idea that an algorithm, irrespective of how many cases or data points it analyses, can incorporate both the experience and human judgement that is required to make important medical decisions.”

Other market barriers covered in the study include Physician and Provider Skepticism, Technology and Ecosystem Complexity, and Regulatory Questions. Other than obstacles, the report also discusses the market issues and drivers that will lead the growth in the industry. Some of these major drivers are cost-cutting in data management and analysis, active research for diseases, genomic sequencing databases, EH (Electronic Health) records, and growth in NLP or Natural Language Processing. Driven by these factors the growth in the revenue of the global AI healthcare market is forecasted to grow steadily as shown in the chart below-

It is foreseeable that the digital healthcare revolution is all set to change how investments are considered in the healthcare industry. What remains to be seen is how this increasing reliance on technology is going to turn out when conflicts arise with data privacy and data ownership.

Resources:

https://www.tractica.com/research/artificial-intelligence-for-healthcare-applications/

https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/analytics/healthcare-artificial-intelligence-projected-surpass-34-billion-2025