What is AI Healthcare? A Guide to Taiwan's Smart Healthcare Status and 5 Major Applications

What is AI healthcare? What impact will it bring? This article will give you a glimpse into the future of technology.

What is AI Healthcare? Understanding the Integration of Digital Technology and Public Healthcare

Smart healthcare refers to the practice of applying AI technology in the medical field. To understand the development of smart healthcare, we need to look back at the evolution of digital health (eHealth). During the 2005 World Health Assembly (WHA), the World Health Organization (WHO) defined eHealth as "the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for health." However, by the 2018 WHA, the WHO expanded its focus on digital technology, formally recognizing its critical role in improving public health. It called on member states to prioritize the development of digital health technologies to promote Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Simultaneously, they provided a clearer definition of Digital Health, which includes "eHealth, mHealth, and other emerging technologies in the field of healthcare, such as the use of advanced computer science like big data and AI." Under the WHO development framework, smart health care is a part of digital health, and smart medicine is a key component of smart health care.

In the United States, the newly established Digital Health Center of Excellence aims to drive the development and application of digital health technologies and provides a clear definition. According to the center, digital health technology refers to the application of system platforms, IoT, software, and sensors in healthcare-related fields. These applications range from general health promotion to the use of medical devices, including applications that assist in diagnosis and supplement other medical products such as medical devices, drugs, and biological agents.

As digital technology continues to advance across various fields, healthcare development has progressed accordingly. Applications featuring AI programs, particularly machine learning algorithms, have become essential components in an increasing number of medical devices. One of the greatest advantages of machine learning is its ability to automatically generate vast amounts of data during service delivery and perform analysis and judgment based on that data. Over the past decade, the number of AI-enabled medical devices reviewed and authorized by the U.S. FDA for legal sale has continued to grow.

In Taiwan, smart healthcare basically follows the definitions of the WHO and the U.S., while further emphasizing the dual-axis development of hospitals and communities with the vision of achieving precision health.

Taiwan's basic development policy for smart healthcare follows the definitions of the WHO and the U.S., emphasizing the importance of dual-axis development in hospitals and communities to achieve precision health as the ultimate goal.

Tsz-yin Chang, Deputy Director of the Industry, Science and Technology International Strategy Center (ISTI) at ITRI, pointed out that smart healthcare services are centered around smart hospitals, extending medical services to communities, homes, and other settings. Tools such as wearable devices, IoT, health information, and data value creation are used to realize the vision of precision health. The advancement of the medical field driven by smart technology will gradually manifest in the following 5 dimensions:

Tsz-yin Chang, Deputy Director of ISTI at ITRI, noted that smart healthcare services center on smart hospitals and expand medical services to various settings like communities and homes. To achieve the vision of precision health, we can utilize tools like wearable devices, IoT, health information, and data creation. Smart technology is driving medical development and showing results in five aspects:

1. Assisting Medical Decision-making: Developing digital decision control centers in hospitals to organize and analyze data helps accelerate the efficiency of handling acute cases. Digital decision control centers collect various hospital data—such as medical records, lab reports, and medication logs—to organize and analyze them. This data provides a strong reference for medical decisions, allowing doctors to make accurate diagnoses and treatment plans more quickly. Meanwhile, digital decision control centers can provide real-time data monitoring and early warning functions, enabling hospitals to respond more effectively to emergency patients, improving treatment efficiency and success rates.

2. Improving Doctor-Patient Relationships: Implementing digital technology and AI to help improve processes and enhance patient experience and doctor-patient relationships. The application of digital technology and AI will simplify hospital workflows, speed up patient visits and diagnosis times, thereby reducing wait times and improving efficiency. Additionally, digital technology can provide more convenient appointment and registration systems. Furthermore, AI technology can be used for patient disease risk assessment and treatment selection, providing objective advice to help doctors and patients make better decisions together. These improvements will enhance the patient's experience and improve the doctor-patient relationship.

3. Streamlining Administrative Processes: Using technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI to allow caregivers to focus on caregiving rather than spending time on administrative tasks. RPA and AI can automate hospital administrative work, such as appointment registration, medical record management, and financial accounting, reducing the waste of human resources. These technologies also provide quick information retrieval and organization, allowing caregivers to find relevant patient information more easily, improving clinical efficiency and precision. This allows caregivers to focus on providing high-quality patient care without spending significant time and energy on tedious administrative tasks.

4. Optimizing Service Flows: Analyzing hospital service bottlenecks and optimizing hospital service flow designs to improve service quality. Through data analysis and process monitoring, hospitals can understand bottlenecks and issues within service flows to propose corresponding improvement plans. For example, by increasing manpower and resources, wait times and queuing can be reduced, improving the patient experience. Efficiency and teamwork can also be boosted by improving collaboration and communication between departments. These improvements will help raise hospital service quality, meet patient needs, and gain their satisfaction and trust.

5. Enhancing Operational Efficiency: Implementing digital supply chains, automation, and robotics to improve operational management and back-end efficiency. Digital supply chains and automation technology help hospitals achieve more efficient material supply and management, reducing disputes and delays while improving operational efficiency and cost control. Additionally, robotics can be applied to hospital logistics and cleaning tasks, such as moving items or sanitation, reducing labor requirements and boosting efficiency. The application of these technologies will help hospitals save time and costs, improve management efficiency, and provide better medical services.

Whether from the perspective of global public health needs or the development of Taiwan's industry, the development of the smart healthcare field holds market potential and concerns public welfare; therefore, it is a key government policy direction. Smart healthcare is essentially the integration of digital technology and medicine. To establish a presence in the smart healthcare field, it is necessary to cultivate talent with cross-disciplinary knowledge, particularly those with dual expertise in AI and biomedicine, to seize future opportunities.