By: The Economist
October 3, 2018
Erlanger hospital, Tennessee – the medical staff here are at the forefront of efforts to transform healthcare with data and those efforts could make the difference between life and death. At many hospitals there can be critical delays in analyzing brain scans. Hours can go by before patients are properly diagnosed and transferred for emergency treatment. But Dr Tom Devlin’s team is using a new data-driven tool called Viz.AI. It’s machine learning technology quickly draws on fast amounts of medical data gathered from years of research. This hospital is pioneering another data-driven technology that could save lives. Today, Carol will be the world’s first patient to have her brain monitored for signs of a stroke during heart surgery. It’s an innovation that could transform the outcome for heart surgery patients across the world. As Carol goes under the knife this scanner uses data collected on hundreds of patients to identify clots that might be passing to her brain. Data driven innovation is rapidly spreading in parts of the healthcare industry. Services powered by artificial intelligence are said to be worth 6.6 billion dollars by 2021.