SVC Library: Student Research Guide WQ25/ AI Improving Healthcare: Home

What is this Guide for?

A Guide to Researching How Artificial Intelligence is Improving Healthcare

This is a student-created research guide for English 102 & Library 201 Learning community

The purpose of this guide is to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to healthcare and how it benefits the medical field.

The research thesis of this guide is to explore how AI is applied to healthcare and how it's beneficial to patient care, physicians' workload, diagnosis, and drug development.

How is AI used in medical diagnosis?
What AI tools are available to physicians?
What is the role of AI in the medical field?
How does AI benefit treatment plans for doctors and patients?
How is AI augmenting healthcare?

Abstract

There is a lot of stress and worry surrounding the topic and idea of AI being integrated into the world. Many Americans feel uncomfortable having AI be part of their daily lives, including healthcare. However, many areas in healthcare benefit from AI tools and programs. This research guide explores the areas of the medical field in which AI is being used to augment or replace many traditional practices. The methodology used to research information for this guide was a wide variety of scholarly journals and studies found on medical journal publishing sites, the SVC database, Google Scholar, and Pew Research Center. This research resulted in the conclusion that AI is used in augmenting disease diagnosis methods in the dental, dermatology, and cancer fields. Additionally, the information found concluded that AI is being used to replace some administrative duties of physicians, resulting in a more manageable workload and aiding in drug development by analyzing mass amounts of data. However, research also showed that the AI tools need to be programmed correctly and should still be overseen by a specialized professional or the AI tools may not be effective. Implications would be that AI programs and programmers need to be held to a high standard when it comes to training these medical AI tools. Some AI technology needs to advance for AI tools to be fully useful in healthcare, however, the tools that are being used already have greatly benefited patients and doctors.

Background Information

The Introduction to AI

The mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing introduced the idea of AI in 1950. The birth of AI started with the simple question, “Can machines think?” In 1956, Turing’s ideas were picked up by Professor John McCarthy at Dartmouth College, who officially deemed AI a field of research. In 1961, James Slagle introduced SAINT (symbolic automatic integrator), the first computer capable of making decisions on a human level.

Important Definitions

AI (artificial intelligence) is… a computer system modeled after the human brain giving it the capability to learn from collected data, create reasonable guesses, generate content, and make decisions.
ML (machine learning) is… a type of algorithm that can improve its performance as it is given more data.
DL (deep learning) is… a subset of ML which uses multiple algorithms or neural networks, to train itself to perform tasks and expose itself to many types of data.
ML and DL are both used to program AI.

Two Different Types of AI Based on Function (Currently Available)

Reactive machine AI: AI systems that are designed to perform a specific task and have no capacity for memory. These systems do not collect data from past outcomes and can only perform a task based on present data.
- Examples: streaming service recommendation engine, computer chess bot.
Limited memory AI: AI systems that can recall past outcomes and use that data for a new outcome. The more data these systems get, the more they can be improved.
- Examples: ChatGPT, photo generator, and virtual assistants like Siri.

Top Companies that are developing AI programs are…

IBM
Google
Nvidia
Microsoft
OpenAI
Amazon
Apple

Student Research Guide WQ25/ AI Improving Healthcare