Siri's Founder: AI Virtual Assistants Will Transform Healthcare in the Next Five Years
This summer, KPCB partner Mary Meeker highlighted the immense opportunities in the healthcare sector in her 2017 Internet Trends Report. She noted that the healthcare market, driven by multiple converging technologies, is nearing a "digital turning point" and is rapidly evolving. While this might sound conservative, the reality is even more exciting.
According to Merkel's research, the volume of digital data worldwide has grown by 48% annually since 2013, largely due to increased digital input. With more information available than ever before, both patients and healthcare providers face unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Leveraging this explosion of data will drive market transformation and redefine service delivery standards. AI solutions will play a pivotal role in this revolution.
Merkel's analysis emphasizes the potential for digital innovation in empowering patients, enhancing health management, refining clinical pathways, and preventing illness. These advancements are deeply intertwined with AI and machine assistance. But what does an AI-augmented healthcare landscape look like in practice?
Data-driven AI technology is uniquely suited to address longstanding inefficiencies in the healthcare market, potentially saving billions of dollars while reducing the workload on physicians. These technologies can gather vast amounts of data, including patient histories, current statuses, potential future states, and real-time analytics, to guide optimal decisions between patients and doctors. Only AI can handle this complex task effectively.
Technologist and investor Vinod Khosla believes that within the next few years, 80% of tasks performed by human doctors will be taken over by technology, allowing physicians to focus more on patient interactions. This doesn't mean replacing doctors with robots; rather, it involves automating repetitive tasks like billing or data entry—chores that are both time-consuming and easily automated. Such responsibilities are ideally suited for AI.
The AI Revolution in Healthcare
Within the next five years, the healthcare industry could undergo a complete transformation. Here are just a few examples:
1. Doctors will begin using AI-powered virtual assistants (similar to Apple's Siri but tailored for medical applications) to assist with diagnosing and treating patients. These assistants will offer real-time support and advice, improving diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficiency. Companies across the globe are investing heavily in AI initiatives. IBM's Watson and startups like Ada are pioneers in this space, acting as digital consulting nurses. This is just the beginning.
These virtual assistants will not only serve the general population but also manage individual patient data. Privacy and security will be paramount, with rapid advancements in protecting patient information. Data will encompass everything from patient histories and emerging threats to epidemiological statistics, images, videos, location data, and treatment reviews. AI will transform these into actionable insights.
2. Equipped with AI virtual assistants, doctors could treat 5 to 10 times more patients with chronic conditions, delivering better outcomes than ever before. Recent studies show that basic AI in clinical settings can handle alerts, reminders, diagnostics, treatment plans, information retrieval, and image interpretation. Automation through AI will significantly reduce the labor-intensive aspects of medicine.
3. AI virtual assistants will provide continuous, real-time advice to maintain health proactively. Our greatest opportunity lies in keeping people healthy instead of reacting to illnesses after they occur. These assistants will gain deep insights into diet, exercise, medication, emotions, and mental states. Manually tracking daily habits like nutrition and fitness is tedious, but new technologies like computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning simplify interaction. Additionally, AI assistants can passively collect valuable data through motion detection, IoT sensors, and other methods. Patients will have a constant companion offering personalized health advice, encouragement, and support.
4. Medical devices once confined to hospitals will find their way into homes, providing more accurate and timely monitoring. New generations of home health equipment, equipped with advanced imaging and sensor technology, will track vital signs and gather more comprehensive data. For instance, AliveCor’s mobile device connects to smartphones to provide personal ECGs, enabling users to check heart rhythms anywhere. Another example is Scanadu's upcoming FDA-approved testing kit, which uses AI to analyze urine samples and detect early health issues.
5. Future tools for affordable diagnosis and treatment will emerge based on data collected from widely adopted digital devices like smartphones. Modern smartphones already feature high-resolution cameras, accelerometers, gyroscopes, touch screens, microphones, and speakers—all contributing to health applications. Small movements while holding a phone might signal Parkinson’s disease, while changes in social media usage could indicate depression. Speech or emotion analysis might identify anxiety. This is just one example of how existing smartphone data can be analyzed to improve health.
6. Robots and home AI systems will assist independent living patients. Once confined to factories, robots are now reminding people to take medications and helping with household chores like cooking and laundry. Japanese robot pets already assist seniors with bathing and provide emotional support.
Outlook
You might think AI is experiencing another hype cycle, leading to eventual disappointment. I disagree. With deep learning, combined with advances in symbolic AI, computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, along with the ubiquitous presence of smartphones, we're on an exponential growth curve for AI adoption.
Today, familiar AI engines like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant remain immature and limited in functionality. But they are learning, much like humans. They're still in infancy, crawling and soon walking. Medical AI virtual assistants will quickly evolve to converse, understand context, and provide meaningful assistance.
As these capabilities are applied to healthcare, they will improve the health of millions, empower doctors, and save trillions in medical costs. Welcome to the AI era.
Norman Winarsky, co-founder of Siri, is a lecturer at Stanford Business School and a consultant for Health2047, focusing on risk development and commercialization. He co-authored "If You Really Want to Change the World: A Guide to Creating, Building, and Sustaining Breakthroughs" with Henry Kressel.
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