The clinical AI market is projected to reach a $6.6 billion valuation in 2021, and it’s expected to grow more than tenfold over the next five years.
That’s a according to a recent report from Accenture that also claims that “when combined, key clinical health AI applications can potentially create $150 billion in annual savings for the United States healthcare economy by 2026.”
While those are big numbers, the report breaks the potential down into a number of application categories.
For example, Accenture analysts expect a yearly potential savings of $40 billion from new robot-assisted surgery. “Cognitive robotics can integrate information from pre-op medical records with real-time operating metrics to physically guide and enhance the physician’s instrument precision,” the report explains. “The technology incorporates data from actual surgical experiences to inform new, improved techniques and insights. Such improvements enhance overall outcomes and consumer trust for AI applicability across surgical areas of practice. . . . The value will only increase with the development of robotic solutions for a greater diversity of surgeries.”
On the patient experience front, the report projects a yearly savings of $20 billion from the virtual nursing assistants (VNA) that are coming to market in a number of forms.
When AI solutions in the form of VNA “remotely assess a patient’s symptoms and deliver alerts to clinicians only when patient care is needed, it reduces unnecessary hospital visits,” the report observes. “In the case of nurses, AI can save 20 percent of RN time through avoided unnecessary visits. As VNA become accustomed to patient diagnoses and conditions, their abilities will grow beyond effective triage into expertise and recommendations around patient treatment.”
For the back-end of healthcare, the report expects savings of $18 billion yearly from AI focused on administrative workflow assistance.
“Timesaving administrative workflow assistant capabilities—such as voice-to-text transcription— eliminate non-patient care activities including writing chart notes, prescriptions and ordering tests,” analysts said. “This equates to a work time savings of 17 percent for doctors, and 51 percent for registered nurses based on Accenture analysis.”
Other annual savings categories from AI included $16 billion from dosage error reduction, $17 billion from fraud detection, $5 billion from enhanced preliminary diagnosis capabilities and $2 billion in cybersecurity advances.
In short, given that “the flurry of new entrants and explosion of data . . . is leading to smarter systems, the case for AI adoption is stronger than ever.”