How AI is Being Used in Healthcare
At a recent health meeting, a speaker talked about how artificial intelligence (AI) can greatly improve healthcare and speed up scientific progress. New AI tools offer special chances to make healthcare easier to get, more personal, and work better for everyone. They can also help science move faster. This update shares how AI is being used in healthcare around the world, new partnerships, and the creation of an AI co-scientist. This AI co-scientist is meant to help scientists work together, find new information, and come up with new ideas for research. It uses what we already know and is made for specific research goals. It has shown promise in finding new uses for existing drugs and suggesting ideas for new treatments.
AI is making accurate health information more accessible
For doctors and nurses, we created MedLM and Search for Healthcare. These tools can answer medical questions and are available on Google Cloud. They help doctors make better decisions and help patients get the right care. Our research makes sure that health information from AI is as accurate and reliable as possible. With new AI that can understand different types of information and have conversations, we can change how patient care is given and make it personal for everyone, focusing on preventing sickness.
Generative AI is paving the way for personalized healthcare
We are studying how AI systems can help doctors diagnose illnesses by having conversations with patients. We use a research AI system called AMIE, which is good at figuring out diagnoses and talking with people. It can ask smart questions to help find possible illnesses and talk about them kindly, even in special medical areas. Phones and wearable devices are also areas where AI can give personal health and wellness advice, using data like steps taken and heart rate. We created the Personal Health Large Language Model, another version of Gemini. It can understand information from sensors and give advice about sleep and exercise.
Finding diseases early is very important for better health. For the past ten years, we have used AI to help find diseases like breast cancer, lung cancer, and diabetic eye disease. Through partnerships, we are now using these AI tools in hospitals so more people can get checked early and accurately. This is especially helpful in places with fewer medical resources and doctors. In the next ten years, our health partners in India and Thailand plan to provide 6 million free eye screenings for diabetes. Apollo Radiology International will use our AI models to provide 3 million free screenings in India for tuberculosis, lung cancer, and breast cancer. We are also working on an AI model to help check the health of unborn babies, especially in places with limited medical resources.
We are also building the technology for more people to access healthcare. Our Health AI Developer Foundations provide tools to help developers create AI models for healthcare more easily. Tools from our Open Health Stack (OHS) have already been used in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia to help healthcare workers who serve millions of patients.
AI is improving health outcomes globally
We continue to see the amazing potential of AI to advance science and make healthcare better, more personal, and available to everyone. The process of making scientific discoveries and using them to help people is getting faster and wider. We will continue to do this responsibly, working with partners worldwide, and sharing our research. In 2024, we published over 50 papers sharing our latest health research. We believe AI will keep helping science and healthcare for the benefit of billions of people.