Big Data and Artificial Intelligence continue to shape and improve the lives of all of us, whether we are interested in technology or not.
I would like to tell people who are unfamiliar with the subject or who face difficulties in visualizing these concepts, to think of Big Data as a huge pool containing all kinds of information. If the information just stands still in that pool untouched, who can benefit from them? Therefore, it’s necessary to study them and give a meaning to each of them, and determine what benefit they can provide at what point in order for this information to be useful for humanity, nature, and shortly so for the whole universe.
While “Big Data”, which is explained with the metaphor, “pool full of information”, makes any kind of data you can think of, obtained from different sources, on yhe other hand, makes valuable information from Big Data useful with technological devices that have been taught what to do.
Undoubtedly, the health sector is one of the sectors where these two concepts, which cannot be considered separately from each other today, are used to benefit society. Because Big Data and Artificial Intelligence offer many benefits to people, such as improving their health, which is the most important and most valuable element of their life, providing information about their diseases, prolonging their life span, and even enabling them to take precautions by predicting and telling about possible health risks. At the same time, it reduces the workload of healthcare professionals, reduces treatment costs, increases the time physicians allocate to their patients, and significantly supports diagnosis and treatment decisions.
We see that human life span has been gradually extended over the last 100 years, with scientific developments such as developments at medicines, progress in imaging methods, and increase in clinical studies. The Turkish Statistical Institute 2020 report also states that the rate of the elderly population in our country has increased by 22.5% in the last five years.
At this point; to be achieved with the progress in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are as follows:
- Personalized treatment (For example, determining the most effective treatment by evaluating the medical history and data of cancer patients)
- Ability of radiologic viewing methods to notice even the smallest details,
- Opportunity for each person to access health services with no matter where he/she lives in the world,
- Patient care at home,
- Accelerating the medicine development progresses,
- Expectations such as the detection of certain diseases and even epidemics in advance give a person hope for a long, high-quality life that they will spend with their loved ones.
However, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence using for health is not at the desired level yet, despite all these benefits and being the area where data is recorded the most.
I can list my ideas for the main reasons for this situation as follows;
- Health is a very sensitive, ethical issue. At this point, Artificial Intelligence is a system that is expected to reach a decision quickly after processing a lot of data with some programs and algorithm methods within the structure we call deep learning. Therefore, machines making mistakes risk is taken into account, cautious and integrating into daily practice cannot be as fast as in other industries; when the subject is directly human health.
- Again, from an ethical point of view, the need to conveniently use personal data in this system causes reservations, slowing down the functioning of the system.
- If I would give another example; it is necessary to see the net results and to analyze them before using new medicine on a human, which can be obtained as a result of clinical studies that can take many years.
Therefore, we choose to use this system by processing our health data in a simpler way. For example; we count our steps with smart watches, track the amount of daily calories we spend, our heart rate, and store our personal health data.
So, will Big Data and Artificial Intelligence always progress more slowly in health? Of course no. Companies that provide service and direction to the health sector are trying to create developments and produce solutions by examining and working on the data that has been processed and made valuable.
New company acquisitions that will enable these companies to integrate Big Data and Artificial Intelligence into their organizations may contribute to their progress in this direction. Again, I think that the industry should definitely give themselves momentum for the future in this sense. In my opinion, at the beginning of these accelerations, it is critical that they make serious investments in the field and receive consultancy services from professionals who have experience in the health sector.
On the other hand, the R&D studies of giant companies such as Google, IBM, Watson on many subjects such as Artificial Intelligence’s early diagnosis of diseases, increasing the quality of life of cancer patients” sounds exciting to me.
In addition to the fact that Big Data and Artificial Intelligence continue to contribute to human health, support for global economic development is also significant.
Consulting company Frost&Sullivan’s says that $6,7 billion dollars revenue will be reobtained in the global health system with Artificial Intelligence in the year 2021. Another consulting firm, McKinsey, also says that Big Data and machine learning has the potential to earn $100 billion annually in the healthcare economy.
When considered from this point of view, these revenues brought to the economy by health companies that are doing some work to move health forward make Artificial Intelligence even more valuable.
As a physician and academician, I believe that with the acceleration of its integration in the field of health and the setting of certain standards, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will increasingly take place in our lives, although there are still areas of development ahead of it.
Prof. Halil Coşkun, M.D.