Practice Management Alert

Learn the basics now, as various forms of AI are incorporated into the healthcare industry.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more common in the healthcare industry. Bone up on your knowledge about AI by taking this quiz. Look at the seven terms and see if you can match each to its definition. Check your answers on page 21.

Understand Medical Use of Artificial Intelligence

AI encompasses computers, devices, and other machines that have learned to “think” and can thus perform some humanlike functions. The healthcare industry is already using AI in myriad ways and will probably continue to up its usage. Some current examples: Researchers utilize AI in clinical trials, physicians glean diagnosis and treatment data through AI, some medical devices can monitor patient health with AI, and billing staff can use AI when evaluating and collecting practice revenue.

Knowing some basic AI vocabulary can demystify any current or future usage in the healthcare industry.

Match each of these seven words and phrases — and their common acronyms, when applicable — to with their respective definitions:

A. Algorithm
B. Data Mining
C. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
D. Machine Learning
E. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
F. Real-Time Health Systems (RTHS)
G. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

1. Utilizing _________ allows workers to pass on repetitive, simple, and sometimes annoying work to bots, allowing healthcare workers to focus on patients.

2. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), ________ is an “analytical process [that] attempts to find correlations or patterns in large data sets for the purpose of data or knowledge discovery.” In healthcare, this might mean connecting the dots in clinical trials to discover a treatment or cure for a disease.

3. _________ may be the most important part of the AI puzzle because it happens when algorithms are introduced and then the machine — without any further programming or information — learns from the patterns and predicts future outcomes. For providers, this process could be used to predict future illnesses and treatments based on a patient’s past experiences and history.

4. The ________ relates specifically to the array of medical devices and applications in healthcare and their connection to the internet and each other. For example, when a heart monitor collects stats on a patient and sends it electronically to the doctor, that would be an example of the utilization of both this technology and AI.

5. _________ is the culmination and coordination of computer applications, devices, and electronic health record (EHR) technology to offer healthcare advice — in real time. This uses AI to quickly assess problems, provide solutions, and revolutionize the industry.

6. Simply put, a[n] _______ is a set of rules or instructions that are the foundation for AI. Machines follow these mathematical sequences, build on them, and learn from them.

7. _________ assists machines to understand human language. A physician who dictates notes to a device, which uses voice recognition to document the service and offer solutions, uses this technology.