Artificial Intelligence diagnoses childhood diseases as accurate as a doctor

China has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme that is able to diagnose childhood diseases as accurate as human doctor.

The programme is able to check test results, health records and even handwritten notes and give a diagnosis just like a doctor. it has unlimited data processing and storage capacity.

According to Nature Medicine reported that the programme is able to match and even out-perform primary care paediatricians diagnosis on flu, asthma, and even life threatening pneumonia.

Speaking to AFP, senior author and researcher at the University of California, Khang Zhang said that the technology would be able to perform most duties that doctors do but under supervision by a human being.

“It can mimic a human paediatrician to interpret and integrate all types of medical data—patient complaints, medical history, blood and imaging tests—to make a diagnosis. But AI will never replace a doctor. It will simply allow doctors to do a better job in less time and at a lower cost,” said Zhang.

There have been numerous studies on AI. Reports show that the technology is improving and it will soon be able to detect diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer and even genetic disorders.

In a bid to train the system, a team of scientists injected more than 100 million data points from 1.3 million paediatrics patients visits at a major referral hospital in China.

The programme diagnosed respiratory infections and sinuses with 95% accuracy and surprisingly performed better with less common diseases.