KARACHI: Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerged as a surprising field worldwide with its efficiency, accuracy, and productivity, as its experts highlighted the importance of its extensive application in the healthcare sector to address the rampant health issues of the masses in Pakistan.
They concluded that investment in AI can transform the healthcare sector, reducing time and cost effectively, thus saving precious lives and improving quality of life across the country.
Adnan Zaidi, an IT expert, said that artificial intelligence will greatly help to provide medical treatment in far-flung and rural areas of the country at a broader level, from early diagnosis of illness to the surgery of patients to address their health issues.
Presently, the diagnostic systems are being adopted at hospitals in Pakistan, particularly for X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, but various advanced applications of artificial intelligence could help in treating patients accurately, efficiently, and quickly, he further said.
A few hospitals in Pakistan have also carried out surgeries on patients diagnosed with critical diseases successfully; however, the scale of these operations should be enhanced to save precious lives, said Adnan Zaidi, Chief AI Officer and Co-Founder of Proxima.
Artificial intelligence is bringing miracles worldwide in different areas. In Pakistan, the applications of this field are very limited and need to be enhanced in various sectors, particularly the healthcare sector.
In this regard, the AI Summit was organized in different cities in Pakistan by 10Pearls to arrange insightful and thought-provoking sessions in the last few years. Recently, the event organized various panels, including “Deciphering AI's Innovative Role in HealthTech†at ITCN Asia Lahore, which highlighted various developments in the healthcare sector through the use of artificial intelligence, depicting the interest of technology experts to launch AI in different fields.
AI has immense potential to contribute to Pakistan’s progress, especially in the healthcare sector, as it can improve the healthcare diagnosis systems of hospitals and enhance the efficiency of early treatment of patients to take care of critical health issues, said Zeeshan Aftab, another AI expert.
For instance, using machine learning, we have helped hospitals and clinicians detect early signs of cancer using data from CT scans, he said.
We are also working with pharmaceutical companies and helping them analyze the effectiveness of drugs during the testing stages and optimize the results, said Zeeshan Aftab, who is co-founder and MD at 10 Pearls.
For areas where we don’t have available data, such as the creation of drugs, AI could be used to simulate and create data from scratch and suggest the molecule structure of the drug to cure and test it on a virtual human body before we go and test it on human beings. This will drastically reduce the time and cost of launching new drugs, he further added.
Experts urged that the government devise a uniform policy for AI applications in the healthcare sector, including the availability of a central database and SOPs for hospitals, according to AI experts. Doctors and medical practitioners should also acquire training in artificial intelligence to use this technology for the treatment of their patients, bringing innovation to the healthcare segment and providing high-quality healthcare services to patients.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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