How 4IR is re-shaping healthcare

Last week I had the privilege of engaging with professionals in the field of orthopaedics, a branch of medicine concerned with conditions involving the muscular and skeletal systems. Known as, orthopaedics in their lingua, it gives us the ability to move the musculoskeletal system.

The Kenya Orthopaedic Association Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference was attended by over 300 orthopaedic surgeons and trainees in the country. Also, in attendance were the nurses, physiotherapists and allied professionals.

Like many other professionals, the key objective of their meeting was to understand the future of their occupation in the wake of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Indeed teaching, planning of surgeries and diagnostic techniques will be disrupted in the era of 4IR. And this will change the field and make them more effective and efficient.

Many of the technologies that will drive 4IR like Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, additive manufacturing (3D printing) and big data are now widely being used in the healthcare system. Already, AI is now being seen as getting better in doing what humans can do. However, experts are arguing that despite the effectiveness and efficiency, it is not going to replace these professionals any time soon.

On the other hand, technology can be used in combination with computer vision, and image processing to create an automated 3D structure for enabling physicians better plan for surgeries.

The potential for robotics and AI in healthcare is massive. For example, in areas of early detection of diseases, there is no technology that can match AI.

Many of the AI systems are trained to find the early stages of cancer more accurately than trained radiologists could. Studies on some scans reveal that when the doctors had not seen anything wrong, AI detected the developing of cancer cells. And these were detectable after two years.

These technologies have made disease diagnosis much easier than in the past. Giant tech companies, notably IBM’s Watson and Google’s DeepMind Health, are making massive data available to facilitate quick interpretations of scan results. This has enabled doctors to create patient-specific anatomical models for 3D printing and virtual/augmented reality to enable effective surgical procedures.

But considering the huge amount of data in health systems is a bonus, it is still useful for patients and doctors to align with it to support predictive and timely clinical decision making. These large data sets also have other advantages like leveraging emerging processes called pattern recognition to identify degenerative diseases and inform the patient to take corrective measures before it worsens.

The benefits of adapting to these technologies are many. For example, if the local success rate in surgical procedures like hip replacement that forces many Kenyans to travel abroad for treatment improves, the credibility of our surgeons will exponentially change. And this can make Kenya become a major medical hub for East and Central Africa.

Changing the narrative of overseas treatment to local will also lead to greater savings in foreign currency and reduce the rising medical tourism to India.

It can help the Kenyan medical experts to offer services elsewhere in Africa without having to move out of station. Also, it can improve telemedicine to rural communities by having technicians that can take scans for interpretation by experts in major centres, while enabling global collaborations for better health outcomes.

As I write this article, there are portable imaging and ultrasound machines in rural Kenya which are mostly used by midwives for maternity services that are lowering infant mortality rates.

Similarly, other professions like orthopaedics can join the bandwagon of leveraging these tools and the use of data to make quick decisions mostly on the motor bike accidents and help reduce the increasing limb injuries in rural Kenya.