A.I based Doctor”Babylon” To Help Keep Humans Healthy
Artificial Intelligence, as many analysts predict, is the next frontier for the tech industry. As it stands today, scientists and researchers are putting in long hours to make the dream of machines with “human-like intelligence” a reality rather than just a possibility.
Intelligent machines and softwares which possess deep human-like knowledge are growing in numbers leading to them being employed for use in a number of tasks. From hospitality to defence, use of artificial intelligence has been explored in various fields, latest of which will now be health-care.
Babylon, a U.K.-based subscription health service will soon launch an AI-based app designed to provide medical diagnosis to patients just like a real life doctor would. The idea behind Babylon is to create an artificially intelligent ‘doctor’ which will help humans stay away from illnesses.
For this, Babylon will walk the extra step that your family doctor won’t, and track your daily habits, collect data about heart rate, diet and medical records and then cross reference them with the symptoms that the patient reports to Babylon. Upon doing all this, Babylon will scan through its vast database and diagnose the illness and offer an appropriate course of action.
The idea of Babylon is comparable to IBM’s Watson Smart A.I tech, which is already employed at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Watson Smart assist’s doctors in their work by going through a database of 600,000 medical evidence reports, 1.5 million patient records and clinical trials, and two million pages of text from medical journals to help doctors develop treatment plans tailored to patients’ individual symptoms, genetics, and histories.
The founder of Babylon, Parsa reveals that the A.I will not look to replace human doctors by acting as a substitute, but would rather work by keeping a close eye on the users health and help users prevent illnesses before they happen.
Talking about the A.I driven app, Parsa said, “For example, if your heart rate is faster than normal and your physical activity hasn’t increased, it’s a sign you’re either stressed or dehydrated or you’re fighting something. The platform can bring this to your attention and suggest the best course of action to fight the illness before it surfaces.” The app will also remind patients to take their medication, and follow up to find out how they’re feeling.
