AI in Healthcare

Delighted to speak at the recent 17th BMG Economic Forum at the London Stock Exchange about the use of AI in hashtag#healthcare, and to hear first hand of the ambitions and fast-changing development landscape in Saudi Arabia.

Health is a critical foundation for all of us.  The way we deploy and govern technology in this space has wide reaching implications.  Some aspects to share:

1. We are struggling to keep up with the accelerating decline in global health. The trajectory is towards 1 cancer diagnosis every minute.  ⅓ of adults have more than one chronic condition.  Spending on diabetes alone is $1tr globally.  I find these statistics chilling to realise.

2. To have a meaningful impact we need to focus on prevention.  We are seeing early detection rates increase by 20% for breast cancer, diagnostic accuracy increase by 15%, and wearables monitoring and predictive analytics support the management of a range of health conditions with the help of AI.  There are some incredible companies building in this space.

3. However, understanding and addressing why we get sick in the first place needs our shared attention. Without this we will be swimming against an ever stronger tide.

4. The opportunities are not in AI alone, but in using the range of emerging technologies, from robotics to augmented reality, internet of things and distributed ledger, while innovating also in areas such as funding, training & education and the role of insurance.

5. Access to data, ethics safeguards and leadership in policy making are key to achieving the outcomes we need. This will require scalable models and governance, including to facilitate integrity-backed collaboration between public and private bodies, and between multiple systems and experts. Where 70% of healthcare organisations have suffered a data breach and where AI systems can inherit bias present in training data, the risks are far from trivial.

6. Ultimately our health is our wealth and we must do all we can to assure it. The country that puts health and care at the heart of its society will be a genuine global leader.

Thank you to Basil Al Ghalayini, my dear friend Nasser Salem, and the BMG Financial Group team for the opportunity to contribute and for receiving me so warmly.  Thank you to the fantastic Zahara Malik for chairing the panel and to my fellow panelists and delegates for the valuable conversation.  It was a genuine pleasure to be part of the day and to discuss the potential that is close at hand.

Video of the day here.

LinkedIn post here.