How Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Healthcare

To take advantage of emerging software tools that incorporate artificial intelligence, healthcare organizations first need to overcome a variety of challenges. Some leading-edge organizations are beginning to do just that, focusing on machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that encompasses statistical methods in which computer systems recognize patterns or correlations in data by ingesting large sets of training data. They improve their performance, or "learn," over time as they incorporate new data; revising their approach as needed without human programmers updating the rules. In the healthcare industry, most machine learning applications are in the research stage. "There is not a ton of clinical use," according to Brian Edwards, independent validation consultant for AI vendors.