African ICT Foundation calls for adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

There are 121 digital health companies leveraging AI/ML and have raised a total of $2.7B with 206 deals from 2011 through 2017, which is just over 10 per cent of all venture dollars invested in digital health during that period.

The African ICT Foundation (AFICTF) has advocated that artificial learning and machine language will change the future by improving treatment design, fine-tuning diagnosis and improving accuracy and speed of detection, improving clinical administration, patient experience and general human life. 

The Foundation made its position known in a paper presented at the annual seminar of the Lagos University Medical Society, hosted by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital with the theme: Artificial Intelligence in Health designed to inform the members of the profession about latest technology advancements in health care.

A member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, Oludare Akinbo who spoke on the topic: ‘A.I. in Medical Practice-Future of Healthcare’ noted that media attention has largely centred on the ability of AI/ML to transform how clinical care is delivered through better diagnostics and treatments. According to him, IBM's Watson supercomputer is still the best-known appliance for Machine Learning adding that Watson is mainly used in the medical and financial sectors.

He disclosed that there are 121 digital health companies leveraging AI/ML and have raised a total of $2.7B with 206 deals from 2011 through 2017, which is just over 10 per cent of all venture dollars invested in digital health during that period. He said also that funding for AI/ML companies peaked in 2016 at $776.4M representing nearly one-third of total funding to AI/ML companies since 2011. Quoting a 2016 report from CB Insights, Akinbo said that about 86 per cent of healthcare provider organisations, life science companies, and technology vendors to healthcare are using artificial intelligence technology saying that by 2020, these organisations will spend an average of $54 million on artificial intelligence projects.  

"Various professionals and reports predict that artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) will diagnose disease better and earlier, treat illness more precisely, and engage patients more efficiently than today’s healthcare system does. On top of this, AI/ML is expected to streamline business operations and restore sanity (and humanity) to the clinician experience”, he said. He also noted that the major technology giants have ventured into healthcare and thus already changing the future of healthcare and promising more radical changes for the better in the nearest future.