Hospitals with artificial intelligence are a promising health challenge in Bolivia

Connecting digital medical records to all medical institutions in the country with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize patient care and to have precise data on the recurrence of diseases in each public hospital is undoubtedly one of the greatest aspirations of the public health system. This topic will be discussed at the AI ​​Health Conference in September, which will bring together experts, authorities and medical students in the field.

The country’s health system has a large amount of information, which makes its management complex. This is experienced every day by the directors or heads of different hospitals, who must find ways to process data, because only clinical records can enable more accurate patient care and even make decisions about disease prevention and care at the national level. Dr. Jimmy Venegas, Academic Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Franz Tamayo University and an expert on the subject, mentioned this while emphasizing the importance of addressing this topic.

“It is a huge challenge at the moment because the Bolivian health system has different needs, tertiary hospitals being a clear example, they are increasingly saturated. However, if we can clearly identify what diseases Bolivians suffer from, what are the most common illnesses, or what their health needs are, then the investment of public resources will surely be properly directed, and for this, hospitals and hospitals must have technology. We talk about artificial intelligence,” Venegas stressed.

Artificial intelligence, as applied specifically to healthcare, refers to the use of machine learning models to search medical data and discover insights that can help improve health outcomes and optimize the patient care experience.

This modern technology presents challenges to health systems and their hospitals, which is why it has become a global trend. Artificial intelligence is bringing benefits to hospitals and their patients. Venegas cited the example of how digitized medical records have improved the quality of the experience between doctors and patients and made progress in disease prevention.

There are all kinds of devices with artificial intelligence at our fingertips, including smart watches and phones with sensors that can detect physical activity and water consumption during the day, heart rate, heart rate variability, and even atrial fibrillation, a very common heart rhythm disorder, among other health data.

But there are more advanced tools, such as SARAH (Smart Artificial Intelligence Resource Assistant for Health) launched by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) as an avatar that provides health information in eight languages ​​and interactive methods.

Another example, but more advanced because it revolutionizes healthcare, in June they opened the world’s first AI hospital in China, with 14 doctors and 4 nurses generated by artificial intelligence, able to take care of patients in a simulated environment. Its creators guarantee that it can diagnose diseases and treat 3,000 patients per day.

In this context, the Pan American Health Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) launched two weeks ago the “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Readiness Assessment Kit for Public Health,” a tool to help countries optimize their capacity to integrate AI into public health systems.

The document aims to promote informed decision-making using innovative tools supporting digital health to facilitate the implementation of AI in strategic planning, improve health outcomes and operational efficiency.

Necessary dialogue and analysis in Bolivia

The relevance of this topic in the training of future medical professionals is crucial, which prompted Unifranz to organize the “International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Health” from September 17 to 18, which aims to promote the integration of technology into hospitals, but especially artificial intelligence; machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence that creates systems that learn automatically; and neural networks, which teach computers to process data in a similar way to the human brain.

“Through the academy, we want to show the importance of incorporating these technological tools into the professional world, because technology and physicians go hand in hand. We want to see this as a trend in educational innovation that we have already applied in the university and show them what will happen in a few years,” Venegas said.

The conference will have national and international speakers showcasing the benefits of AI, including Carlos Otero from Argentina, who will present “Challenges and Experiences of Implementing Electronic Medical Records in Buenos Aires Hospitals, Italy”; Fabián Villena from Chile, who will speak on “Introduction to Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Health”; and Martin Saban from Argentina, who will speak on “Health Outcomes Assessment and the Impact of Data-Based Public Policies”, among others.