Generative AI in Practice

11HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMATION: FROM PERSONALIZED ADVICE TO OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

GenAI is ushering in a transformative era in healthcare, with far-reaching implications for patient care, diagnostics, and more. There's a lot happening in this field, so this chapter touches on key developments only, with a particular focus on:

• Personalized advice for patients
• Detection of diseases
• Personalized treatment
• And operational improvements

We'll return to healthcare in Chapter 19, where we'll look at the use of GenAI in drug discovery and development. But for now, let's get into the amazing ways GenAI can improve healthcare and deliver better outcomes for patients (not to mention a better working experience for healthcare professionals).

Giving Patients Personalized Health Advice

This goes beyond basic chatbots that can help patients book appointments, refill prescriptions, or answer routine enquiries (although such chatbots do have a valuable place in healthcare, as we'll see later in the chapter). Sophisticated large language models like GPT-4, combined with human doctor expertise, has led to a new wave of virtual health assistants – developed to give actual medical advice that's personalized to each patient's specific health concerns. With millions of people around the world unable to access medical care (either because of their geographical location, for economic reasons, or simply because their local services are too stretched), we can expect to see AI increasingly pick up ...