It would be an understatement to say that the last two years have been tough for everyone. Living through the worst pandemic in a century has turned everyone’s lives upside down and has put a severe strain on the UK’s health system, creating widespread delays to medical treatments.
But even before COVID-19, the UK was in what some commentators were calling a stress epidemic, with 72% of Brits reporting to feeling stressed – one of the highest rates in the world. This stress has only been compounded by events of the last two years and in polls recently conducted on our Community platform, more than 80% of respondents (25) have experienced burnout in their career, which is a severe form of stress and was classified by the World Health Organisation as a chronic occupational phenomenon in 2019.
Enter AI and data
The applications of AI and data are wide-ranging, from fintech to food production, but nowhere is its potential more obvious than in the fields of healthcare and medicine.
AI and data can improve patient outcomes by providing quicker, more effective mental health diagnoses and treatment, not to mention wider benefits around improving drug development, accelerating access to care (including virtual healthcare) and improving the ability of health practitioners to monitor patients in their own home (telecare).
With the UK’s healthcare system under huge stress during the pandemic, increasing numbers of Brits have turned to technology to help them access care and make informed decisions about their health. In little over a year, more than 25 million additional people in England registered with NHS Login – up from 2.2 million users in September 2020. Additionally, research from health insurer Cigna Europe suggests that three in every four people in the UK would prefer to use virtual health tools over physical GP appointments.
So, how is data and AI helping the UK fight the pandemic? Here are a couple of examples.
Delegates that attended last year’s DataFest 21 would have heard first hand from Professor Kevin Fong about his work at NHS England at the start of lockdown and the crucial role of data in combating the pandemic. He explained how Particle Physicists were the best people to design the complex modelling created to predict what the pandemic would do next using census data, live updates on infections and a great deal of computer power. Data – he argued – was crucial to fight the pandemic. For more info on this year’s DataFest22, click here.
Elsewhere, in 2020, researchers working for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) managed to successfully train an AI model to accurately identify 98.5% of positive cases including completely asymptomatic cases. The test, dubbed ‘Cough-In-A-Box’, detects the virus through recordings of a user coughing into their smartphone’s microphone. The discovery opened the possibility of identifying potential coronavirus cases through an individual’s mobile phone without the need for immediate testing – which could have a huge amount of positive impact in future pandemics.
Not all respondents to our community platform poll were convinced of AI’s role in diagnosing issues, however, with the vast majority (80%) of respondents (30) being unsure as to whether they would trust an AI over human opinion. What do you think? Have your say here.
How is tech improving people’s health and wellbeing?
As healthcare has become increasingly digital, the number of virtual tools and platforms to help improve people’s health and wellbeing has too. Nowadays, people can speak with trained mental health professionals at the click of a button and clever AI algorithms can detect stress in people’s voice so much so that they can even predict when someone is at risk of cardiovascular disease.
The rise of the smartwatch is also vital in giving people control over their healthcare and provides users and their trusted tech suppliers with an array of data that people can use to tailor their healthcare regime and make better health choices. Today, just under 15% of Brits own a smartwatch and its popularity is growing year-on-year. We can expect further innovations to be driven by the increase in the wearable tech market, helping people improve the quality of their night’s sleep, track their exercise and boost their mental health.
How is the Data Lab supporting the latest developments in healthcare?
As Scotland’s innovation centre for AI and data, we’ve supported various businesses to collaborate and develop health and wellbeing products, tools and services that bring a real impact to the people of Scotland. These include, through The Data Lab, providing funding to help Healthy Nibbles (a company dedicated to helping people eat more healthily) to create a tool that allows users to better educate themselves, deliver real time personalised nutrition and make healthier decisions – known as DSIONS (more info here).
In addition, we also collaborated in a ground-breaking trial led by The University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, in partnership with housing care specialist Blackwood Homes and Care, to use smart meter data to remote monitor vulnerable residents and to flag up possible causes for concern for elderly and disabled people living in their own homes. The ambition is that the new predictive digital technology will provide an additional service to complement the traditional proactive push button personal alarm worn by residents, particularly aiding people with dementia and those who may be confused, may forget or be unable to activate their current alarm (more info here).
If you have a project or initiative, you’d like support on, we’d encourage you to get in touch at info@thedatalab.com to see what options there may be available for your business.