Chiropractic in the coming years will see a number of breakthroughs for the application of artificial intelligence in medical science
Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science dedicated to enabling computers to mimic human thinking, is making waves in health care. Inevitably, AI would start having an impact on chiropractic clinics in the process. Many of the everyday tasks chiropractors and their teams perform will likely be affected by AI and the application of artificial intelligence in medical science.
This creates a wide variety of new possibilities for chiropractors. You can save staff hours for more high-level tasks and automate much of your back office work, or create chatbots to interact online with prospective patients and mine patient data for valuable insights. In the process, these applications may save your practice time and money, providing key productivity you can apply to other tasks and responsibilities.
By learning more about how AI works and what it can do for your practice, you can start putting computer intelligence to work.
How AI works
For many of us, AI in the workplace conjures up images of robot workers carrying out human office tasks in a made-for-TV science fiction film — maybe even robots cleaning our homes (which they already do) or driving our cars (pioneered by Tesla). While it’s true that constant improvements in technology are allowing for better and more innovative robots, in practice the best applications of robotic technologies are related to data management.
Health care is rich with data, and AI can help analyze data more efficiently and discover new trends that weren’t visible before. This has a variety of different applications in the industry. For example:
- Health research
- Marketing and community outreach
- Individualized care
Not all of these applications for AI have been fully realized just yet. They do offer a lot of promise, though, along with potentially very helpful insights for chiropractic care.
Patient data
One of the most relevant uses for AI in a clinical setting is for data analytics. Patient data contains a lot of valuable information for your practice such as:
- Disease, illness and condition trends
- Demographics
- Patient health outcomes
While no human being could ever analyze thousands of journal articles to give a patient individualized health advice, AI could easily help doctors do this. This could allow you to personalize your care based on the best of what the research says and on an individual patient’s circumstances, past health history or other characteristics. You can eventually tailor treatments with the help of an AI assistant and reduce the likelihood something will be missed in the process of your own literature review or research.
This also means it could be easier to participate in important health research or even tailor your own in-house research using available health databases. If the data is there, the potential is enormous for the application of artificial intelligence in medical science.
Marketing and communications
Automated communications with patients and prospective new patients can improve your clinic’s ability to serve and provide information. AI allows you to set up chatbots on your website, for instance, to engage with online visitors and share important info about your practice. When you automate your marketing, it can help you focus on other things like caring for patients. At the same time, you’re still marketing at a high data-driven level.
In time, it’s likely other marketing and communications applications will become available. Right now, AI-powered email and chat marketing are two popular ways to streamline and improve marketing outreach. This creates great options for chiropractors.
Putting AI to work for your practice
Now may be the best time to start putting AI to work for you. If you like, start small. Find some voice-capture software to speed-up and auto-archive your patient notes. One great place to start is with your marketing — consider a basic chatbot app for your website to collect information and questions from potential new patients.
Source:
Pratt, M. “Artificial Intelligence in Primary Care.” Modern Medicine Network. Published: August 2018. Accessed: June 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.medicaleconomics.com/business/artificial-intelligence-primary-care
