i3 - January/February 2019 - 29

gauge AI's health care potential is
by looking at how the investment
world views it. Research from CB
Insight, a financial analysis firm,
shows that AI startups have raised
$4.3 billion since 2013, topping
all other industries.
From sifting through piles of
data and generating insights, imaging and diagnostics, drug discovery
to remote patient monitoring and
purpose-built digital assistants, AI
will also impact every aspect of
healthcare. Frost and Sullivan, a
consulting firm, predicts that by
2025, AI systems could be involved
in nearly all aspects of global health
care, from AI doctors responding to
specific patient care needs to managing entire health care systems.

I'M A DOCTOR, NOT
A ROBOT

While the convergence of several
trends is responsible for the skyhigh expectations from AI's involvement in health care, none is more
impactful that the exponential
increase in digital health data. An
International Data Corporation
(IDC) report estimates that in 2013
the volume of global health care
data was nearly 150 billion gigabytes, a number it expects will grow
15 times by 2020 to roughly 2.3 trillion gigabytes. At an individual
level, IBM says each person generates one million gigabytes of healthrelated data during their lifetime.
It's not hard to imagine that
the volume of data collected
about our bodies will only surge
in the future. This year alone,
according to some estimates, the
wearables data generated by
Android Wear, Fitbit and Apple
Watch will likely produce two
trillion health measurements.
And much of this extraordinary
amount of data is "unstructured",
which is AI lingo for data that's
not part of a database with
detailed labeling and definitions.
Even if we had the time and

C TA . t e c h / i 3

"By harnessing
connected health
technologies,
consumers can
collect data on their
bodies to
proactively manage
their health and
wellness."

resources to integrate and analyze
the data, the overwhelming nature
of data collection rapidly outpaces
our capacity to process, associate
and find patterns and knowledge.
Enter artificial intelligence. Its
ability to crunch vast amounts of
information into insights far outpaces human minds or any conventional analytical systems.
Armed with this extraordinary
ability to draw correlation and connections between seemingly distinct and unrelated data sets and
tools for natural language processing, AI systems can tackle challenges for which we previously had
no other means of recourse.
The use of AI now and in the
future, along with robotics and
emergent immersive realities, will
deliver rich solutions which will
place greater emphasis on improving health outcomes and preventative care. As AI gains sophistication,
it will get better at doing what
humans do, and do so more efficiently, quickly and cost-effectively.
Many powerful AI tools are
already embedded in mobile devices
and wearables running Android or
iOS. By harnessing connected
health technologies, consumers can
collect data on their bodies to proactively manage their health and
wellness. And consumers for their
part express a greater willingness to
do so now than ever before.
Accenture's 2018 Consumer Survey
on Digital Health found 75 percent
of U.S. adults believe it's important
to use digital technology to manage
their health, with nearly half using
their mobile devices and another
third using wearables to do so.
About one in five consumers also
have already used health-related AI
technologies and find value in these
products and services.

AI HEALTH IS YOUR
GREATEST WEALTH

One of AI's biggest potential benefits is to help people stay healthy so

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

https://www.cta.tech/

i3 - January/February 2019

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