The United Kingdom’s National Health Service is facing a modern-day crisis. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a major strain on healthcare professionals in regard to waiting lists and resources for standard procedures, as well as more complex treatments and surgeries.
Surgeons nationwide are pleading with the NHS to start using newer technologies like Artificial intelligence and robotics to improve the delivery of services, improve waiting time, and better, more efficient performance for healthcare treatments.
The Role of Robotic Systems
Introducing robotic systems such as Da Vinci at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle has also allowed the embrace of the revolution in surgical procedures.
An expert in these technologies, Professor Soomro, suggested that robotics can take surgeons’ daily operation rate to 3, from just 1 patient.
This also meant that the increased productivity could go home on the same day their procedures took place.
The use of robotics will go across kidney, prostate, and even bladder cancer surgeries and there are many opportunities for more specialised procedures.
Streamlining Operations in Hospital Using AI
At Milton Keynes University Hospital, they have employed penguin shaped androids as hospital porters developed by the British AI firm Academy of Robots.
The role of these porters are to assist the hospital with the distribution of medication and paperwork, so that the staff can attend to more important day to day tasks such as medical emergencies with patients.
This slight change creates a huge difference in improved safety and efficiency, which contributes to better care of patients.
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The Inefficiencies with Advanced Technology
A survey conducted among surgeons in the UK show that they lose around 4 working hours a week due to inefficient technologies.
Virtual twins, which are 3D simulations of patients, are potentially helpful as they allow surgeons to perform practice procedures in order to increase the success rate of the procedure and to improve the accuracy when it is time to perform on the actual body.
AI also has the ability to create and complete automated admin tasks like categorising or interpreting medical-related images.
This means less unnecessary hours surgeons will spend trying to carefully read images with important data, for example.
The Role of AI in Diagnostics Accuracies
Over and above robotics and 3D simulations, a pilot study by Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust using Qure AI technology found a 99.7% accuracy rate when distinguishing regular and irregular chest scans.
The UK government aims to further support all these great advances and has promised a £21 million fund in support of the implementation of AI imaging tools across the NHS.
The future of healthcare in the UK sure seems promising as professionals, tech experts and policymakers work together to ensure the integration of these innovations.
This does, however, require training, the development of infrastructures, and ethical regulation throughout to ensure that at the end of the day, patients’ safety and data privacy are still the main priority.
