Mark van Gils: Decision making in healthcare – can technology help?
According to van Gils, healthcare is an area in which Artificial Intelligence has held a promise for many decades. There are many encouraging examples in cases, where the task at hand is relatively simple, such as speech recognition or image analysis. However, the uptake of AI in healthcare has been much slower than in other fields.
“If we go to more difficult tasks, such as making a complex diagnosis, or planning a treatment for a patient, or assigning right resources in a hospital, things become quickly much more difficult, and we find less AI-based success stories.”
Van Gils is interested in creating impactful solutions for using all the data that we nowadays have. The task is not simple, as obtaining data, setting goals, and assessing utility is complex, and the healthcare environment in which the methods are to be used often even more so.
According to van Gils, AI could be used to support decision-making in healthcare and, for example reduce the unsustainable strain on healthcare resources that comes with the increasing life expectancy.
“Combining these actions; doing smart data processing, defining impactful goals, and involving all stakeholders from the start, we do have the keys in our hands to realize the huge potential that AI brings in the healthcare setting.”
Van Gils's contact information
