To deploy AI tech, healthcare needs to first be data literate

Artificial intelligence (AI) has disrupted numerous industries in recent years, but for the technology to work effectively, the technology needs to be used right. For the healthcare sector, one of the end goals is to provide better patient outcomes, minimise human errors and alleviate some of the physical and mental burnout felt by healthcare practitioners as a result of the volume of admin work required. A study in the US found that for every hour that physicians spend providing direct clinical facetime to patients, almost two additional hours are spent on desk work. By utilising AI and analytics, this can be reduced, and by extension, so too will the rates of mental illness. For this to happen, however, the industry must first get ready for the AI era by building up skills in reading, working with, analysing and arguing with data – also known as data literacy. Data is the lifeblood of AI; which is what makes AI and analytics the ideal combination.