How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Healthcare

Over the past couple of years, modern technology has been actively implemented in medicine. AI helps to assess the degree of lung damage, identify malignant tumors, and is used in the development of new drugs.

Similar technologies are being used in Russia. For example, the Russian platform Botkin.AI allows detecting lung cancer through the analysis of medical images using artificial intelligence technologies in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The solution has already been successfully implemented in several regions of the country. Russia also has a digital histological laboratory UNIM, which examines histological materials using a neural network to make a correct diagnosis.

According to the development director of the Webiomed project, Alexander Gusev, the biggest competition in Russia is in the fields of image processing, especially in the analysis of lung tomograms for COVID diagnosis. The second popular field is speech recognition and information synthesis.

One of the main problems with AI is that market participants often do not understand how much a particular development might cost in everyday medical practice.

Another problem is the legislation. Russian law defines that AI software is a medical device and must undergo a long and expensive registration.

It should be noted that now there are only six AI systems in Russia that have been registered as medical software devices.

According to the general opinion of experts, doctors do not easily agree to the introduction of AI. 

“When we ask about the attitude of doctors to innovation, they are just happy and express a desire to work with AI. However, about 2.5-5% of managers and doctors use AI products all the time,” Mr. Gusev added.

At the same time, it does not take much time to understand the technology. AI development is often similar to a conventional computer program interface.