AI to facilitate health predictability

Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton says the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health service delivery will facilitate health predictability.

Artificial intelligence is the process of using technology-driven data to assess, analyse, predict and influence outcomes. Health predictability refers to the extent to which a person’s future health status can be anticipated, based on current or past data.

Speaking at a JIS Think Tank on July 2, the minister posited that AI is now the driving force in healthcare in the developed world, referencing countries like the United States, China and some in Europe.

“Essentially, it is the use of mass data to develop technology that provides minimally invasive arrangements that can be predictors of health and allows you to address health concerns,” the minister said. He explained how AI may be used in the process of health predictability “by using volumes of data to establish patterns and using those patterns to make predictions”.

“If you look at a group of 100,000 persons in a particular age cohort, gender, location and lifestyle and you map the data and that data give you an outcome that may be similar among all those people, then you can extrapolate that, or programme it to give you similar predictability with another population that meets that criteria,” the minister noted.

“So, in very simplistic terms it can tell you that if you eat particular amounts of salt, sugar and fat you may be likely to develop (for example) heart disease and, therefore, the intervention is to adjust that, and you make those kinds of projections,” he added.

Dr. Tufton reasoned that if an individual’s body profile is of a particular state, that may be the result of a pattern of behaviour over a period of time, “so what the AI technology does, when used appropriately, is to give an opportunity for the kind of analysis that may help you to make adjustments for better quality and longer life”.

Tufton said that over time, health predictability has become more accurate as the technology evolves and that “Jamaica should now embrace it and see how it can fit into our cultural experience”.

The minister recently appointed a 10-member AI Technology Enhanced Care for Health (AI TECH) Expert Council to examine and recommend new systems utilising AI technology in healthcare delivery.

This, Dr. Tufton said, is a very fundamental move because “we see the evolution of technology that could make a significant difference in how we treat patients in their communities, their homes, and in hospitals”.