Perspective

Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Have We Made the

Transition from Fiction to Reality?
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Amit Kumar Solanki, Karanpreet Nahar1, Hanuman Meena1

Gene Regulation Laboratory, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, 1Department of Lifestyle Disorder, Central Research Institute of Homoeopathy, Noida,
Uttar Pradesh, India
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“Man’s reach exceeds his grasp,” a familiar phrase been put to test This resurgence in AI has largely been accelerated due to
more often in contemporary world than in the previous. With the progression in pattern recognition abilities pointing toward
advent of modern computational sciences, humans have empowered successful application of DNN, comprising input, output,
machines with intimidating intelligence, so much so that the science and numerous other hidden layers of processing. New age
fictions of yesterdays are palpable realities of present times. Smart processors and availability of digital data in abundance have
homes and office spaces are equipped with devices that could enabled these cognitive machines with better sensitivity and
run and function with precision and without human intervention. specificity. With every business sector eyeing to reap benefits
All this has been made possible by technologies that make use of from this technology, health‑care industry is poised to extract
digitized data, cloud storage, and artificial intelligence (AI). While most out of this innovation primarily due to the availability
digitized data and cloud computing have been talked about for of large amount of digital data.
a long time, AI surfaced to prominence recently with advent of
The DNNs have the potential to help identify and interpret
deep neural networking (DNN) algorithms. The researcher trio
patterns in medical scans, electrocardiograms, and pathology
of Yoshua Bengio, Geoff Hinton, and Yann LeCun developed the
slides; perform automatic skin lesion detection; and assess
fundamentals of deep learning and neural networking for speech
retinal images.[3] The AI‑driven interpretations have been
recognition and machine vision. They were awarded the 2018
applied in the field of imaging to the greatest extent and have
Turing award, recognized as the “Nobel prize of computing”
attained high‑level accuracy and precision. The Food and Drug
substantiating the importance of this technology in today’s world.[1]
Administration (FDA) approval of proprietary algorithms for
AI is an imitation of human intellect by a machine to image interpretation powered by AI has been rising rapidly
analyze and decipher patterns in voluminous data and with increasing number of technology giants and startups
create useful insights. However, in the mid‑1980s when AI joining the race.[3] A large number of clearances have also
system was in its initial stages, it was recognized as a rigid, been given in the field of omics, where machine‑learning
rule‑based system requiring human‑directed updates and methods have the potential to identify molecular patterns
hand‑holding of the system’s features. With the passage of associated with disease status and disease subtypes. These
time, leveraging on machine‑based learning techniques, AI data‑driven molecular biomarkers have multiple implications
research has progressed by leaps and bounds. The system can in trial designing, clinical management, and guiding treatment
now identify features and patterns from data by taking into selection.[2]
account highly complex interactions without explicit human
Finally, the most ambitious application and an overarching
involvement. These machine‑learning methods broadly fall
goal of AI could be to provide millions of people with
into two categories: supervised and unsupervised.[2] The
primary health‑care benefits through telemedicine. The
“supervised machine‑learning” method analyzes a large
set of training data, which is well labeled with both input Address for correspondence: Dr. Amit Kumar Solanki,
and output variables. On the other hand, “unsupervised Gene Regulation Laboratory, National Institute of Immunology, Aruna Asaf
machine‑learning method” has only the input variable as Ali Marg, New Delhi ‑ 110 067, India.
labeled and its objective is to identify structure or distribution E‑mail: [email protected]
in the unlabeled data to further discover the clustering or
association of the original data. This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to
Access this article online remix, tweak, and build upon the work non‑commercially, as long as appropriate credit
is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
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Website: For reprints contact: [email protected]
www.ijamhrjournal.org
How to cite this article: Solanki AK, Nahar K, Meena H. Artificial
intelligence in health care: Have We Made the transition from fiction to
DOI:
reality? Int J Adv Med Health Res 2019;6:39-40.
10.4103/IJAMR.IJAMR_44_19
Received: 02‑04‑2019, Accepted: 14‑09‑2019, Published: 02-01-2020

© 2020 International Journal of Advanced Medical and Health Research | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 39
 Solanki, et al.: Artificial intelligence in health care

AI systems will perform electronic health record (EHR) analysis (displaying nonlinear relationship) to arrive at accurate
assessments and offer medical advice to patients in remote predictions lack explainability. This blend of usefulness
areas where health‑care facilities are not easily available. and opaque nature of such models is often referred to as the
Although there are numerous challenges pertaining to “Black Box Paradox.” Thus, appropriate checks are required
standardization and optimization, prominent players such as to further integration of AI technologies in health care and
IBM, Google, and Microsoft along with young enterprises AI systems should not be implemented in patient care with
such as Curai and Ayasdi have already made headways in exceptions. Algorithms based on synthetic and nonreal cases
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addressing them. could render potentially unsafe and erroneous recommendation

to patients.[2] The legal liabilities in such scenarios and in
In 2017, the National Health Policy of India recognized the
malpractice needs to be discussed, debated, and defined, else
importance of integrating the health information system and
fear would overshadow the trust and confidence of masses in
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aimed at having standardized and interoperable EHRs.[4] A

AI technologies. The challenges offered by AI systems are
year later, the proposed National Health Stack by the National
though not in proportion to the promises, but are formidable.
Institution for Transforming India Aayog recommended
having a centralized electronic health registry of service The idea of robots being primary health‑care providers seems a
providers and beneficiaries, locked with a digital health ID.[5] far‑fetched reality, but it is time to put these cognitive machines
However, the task of digitizing all health records in a country to the “Turing test.”
like India will be humungous owing to its large population
and lack of adequate information and communication Financial support and sponsorship
technology infrastructure, particularly in rural and backward Nil.
areas. Hence, driving the digitization process with natural Conflicts of interest
language processing algorithms will be crucial in scaling There are no conflicts of interest.
the language barriers and reducing the burden on doctors.
In addition, to make health professionals/service providers a
part of this digital revolution, some of the best strategies of
References
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40 International Journal of Advanced Medical and Health Research ¦ Volume 6 ¦ Issue 2 ¦ July‑December 2019