It’s a widely understood fact that evolution is a part of our lives that we cannot negotiate with. It will turn up one way or another and then you must adapt to it in order to move forward. However, even though the evolution we used to know was slow and gradual, this pacey and ever-changing world we live in has managed to amp it up to a level where we find ourselves constantly adapting to new dynamics. Now, this might seem like a negative, but it’s really not. We as a modern society have achieved something that our ancestors never came close to achieving, and in the process of sustaining this success, we are also improving our lives in a way that we never thought was possible. One of the biggest pillars of this human revolution has been technology. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the current generation can pretty much be defined by technology. Nevertheless, it’s important to realize that picking technology as a torch bearer wasn’t just ‘random selection’. The visionaries across the world knew its potential right from the bat, and they are being proven right every day, much of it by medical sector. The medical field has outright transformed under the watch of technology, and now it looks to get even better.
EHR, when it first arrived, was viewed as a massive discovery in it itself, but it is now suffering under the increased burden of overwhelming medical records. It is observed that doctors can spend up to 2 hours for every 1 hour they spend with a patient. The limited focus of current medical records on patient care has been another concern for some time, but apparently the field finally has an answer. Medical specialists are hoping to enlist Natural Language Processing’s help and save big chunks of time, which they can use to treat more patients and also increase the focus on patient care.
NLP, a branch of artificial intelligence, has stirred up massive interest in healthcare due to its sheer promise of adding organic intelligence to the core procedures. Amongst all the NLP believers, we also have Microsoft. Earlier this year, the company announced a $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance, an AI-driven NLP platform that facilitates more comprehensive data collection and note composition.
It will be interesting to see how healthcare uses NLP to transition into a better tomorrow.
