In theory, artificial intelligence should be great at helping out. "Our job is pattern recognition," says Andrew Norgan, a pathologist and medical director of the Mayo Clinic's digital pathology platform. "We look at the slide and we gather pieces of information that have been proven to be important." Visual analysis is something that AI has gotten quite good at since the first image recognition models began taking off nearly 15 years ago. Even though no model will be perfect, you can imagine a powerful algorithm someday catching something that a human pathologist missed, or at least speeding up the process of getting a diagnosis.

During the Covid-19 crisis, hospitals and healthcare companies have been rushed off their feet in trying to take care of affected patients. Alongside this has been the goal to find effective and safe treatments for the virus, which is still ongoing. However, digital technologies have continued to disrupt the healthcare sector, increasing efficiency and visibility, and AI is a key example. "Healthcare is a discipline perfectly suited to reap the rewards that even the most basic task-based AI can provide," said James Norman, chief information officer of healthcare at Dell Technologies. "Globally, the demand for healthcare is increasing at an unprecedented rate – far outstripping the supply of healthcare professionals trained globally. "While obviously true in the developing world, across Europe an ageing population and a rise in chronic disease is causing unprecedented strain on resources." Norman went on to explain how AI has aided pathologists in executing round-the-clock medical results, proving to be useful for treating cancer cases. "In Europe, the number of cancer cases continues to rise while the number of trained pathologists – those tasked with spotting cancerous cells – declines," he continued. "Traditional pathology requires that a GP take a tissue sample from a patient, send it to a lab for analysis in a lab, where it's manually placed on a glass slide to be examined, by a human pathologist, under a microscope.

Artificial intelligence has come a long way since Alan Turing first speculated about the concept of the "thinking machine" in 1950, but there's still a significant gap between the popular conception of AI and the reality of this burgeoning technology. Despite the proliferation of AI applications, the phrase "artificial intelligence" is still more likely to evoke thoughts of HAL 9000 and Lt. Cmdr. Data than anything to do with machine learning or natural language processing. Indeed, the legacy of AI in entertainment has conditioned us to think of it as technology that operates without human input. No wonder so many have been shocked to discover that Google Assistant relies on human help to improve its understanding of voice conversations or that numerous tech startups hire human workers to prototype and imitate AI functionality.

Chinese scientists and clinicians have developed a learning artificial intelligence system which can diagnose and identify cancerous prostate samples as accurately as any pathologist. This holds out the possibility of streamlining and eliminating variation in the process of cancer diagnosis. It may also help overcome any local shortage of trained pathologists. In the longer term it may lead to automated or partially-automated prostate cancer diagnosis. Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer, with around 1.1m diagnoses ever year, worldwide1 (for comparison, that's around x4 the number of men who live in Copenhagen).

Could a robot do my job as a radiologist? If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, "No way!" But if you ask me today, my answer would be more hesitant, "Not yet -- but perhaps someday soon." In particular, new "deep learning" artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are showing promise in performing medical work which until recently was thought only capable of being done by human physicians. For example, deep learning algorithms have been able to diagnose the presence or absence of tuberculosis (TB) in chest x-ray images with astonishing accuracy.

It's obvious that it takes years to train doctors, especially those who handle serious and complicated medical issues – pathologists, cardiologists, dermatologists and the rest, that's why there's always a shortage of these lifesaving experts. Thanks to artificial intelligence because now, machines can be trained to help fill that shortage. In fact, already, we have AI tools that can diagnose pneumonia, fungi, depression and certain eye infections -- all with an average accuracy rate of over 92 percent. And you know what, the list is expanding further! Chinese researchers have managed to develop a new system that diagnoses prostate cancer, as accurately as pathologists do.

From apocalyptic prognostications to impassioned positions -- and everything in between -- it seems like everyone and their mother has developed an opinion on the role artificial intelligence (AI) will play in shaping society in the coming decades. The disparity between each of these notwithstanding, what's clear is that "narrow AI" is already starting to have an impact on everything from software development to education to insurance. Despite multiple dalliances with AI stretching all the way back to the 1970s, my industry, healthcare, has yet to embrace AI with the same vigor as many others. Fortunately, this is finally starting to change. Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan reports that the healthcare AI market is set to experience a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent through 2021, largely because AI has the potential to improve health care outcomes by 30 to 40 percent while simultaneously cutting the costs of treatment in half.

Prostate cancer can be diagnosed by new AI just as accurately as any doctor potentially saving millions of lives, new research suggests. Chinese scientists and doctors have developed an artificial intelligence system which they say can accurately diagnose and identify cancerous samples. Experts say it could streamline and eliminate variation in cancer diagnosis and will be particularly useful in areas where there is a lack of trained pathologists. It could also lead to prostate cancer diagnosis being automated in the future. Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer, with more than a million new cases ever year worldwide.

Recruiting within Data Science and having a partner who is a Surgeon got me thinking about the advances in medicine, and after a lengthy discussion I thought I'd share some of my learnings. There is no doubt that advancement in science and technology has affected every aspect of human endeavor. Processes and procedures are being replaced with software, apps and the likes at different levels and medical practice is not left out. It is believed that we are in a sort of revolution that is characterised by new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, these have, in turn, impacted all disciplines, economies, and industries. And it is most certain that one of the major catalysts for the revolution in the medical practice is going to be artificial intelligence.

If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, "No way!" But if you ask me today, my answer would be more hesitant, "Not yet -- but perhaps someday soon." In particular, new "deep learning" artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are showing promise in performing medical work which until recently was thought only capable of being done by human physicians. For example, deep learning algorithms have been able to diagnose the presence or absence of tuberculosis (TB) in chest x-ray images with astonishing accuracy. Researchers first "trained" the AIs with hundreds of x-ray images of patients without and with tuberculosis. Then, they tested the AIs with 150 new x-rays.