Of covid19 and evolving AI in dentistry
Dr. Mehwish Ajaz
We are at the very beginning of decoding how Machine learning can help us in general scenarios and in context of pandemics like the one that we are wrestling with, i.e Covid19. What we have however clearly leant after suffering the onslaughts of the virus for nearly two years now is that the health care services need to be more faster, more accurate, more prompt and more efficient when dealing with the challenging circumstances at hand.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are fast becoming very relevant and much required in modern business and everyday life. It is, undoubtedly also, steadily, being applied to healthcare services across the globe with developed nations making huge investments in this regard considering AI as the future of technology and admitting its nuanced niche in revolutionizing human life.
Scared of visiting your dentist? Why shouldn’t you! Unless dentistry adopts Artificial intelligence for better accuracy, better precision and better coordination, the risk of spreading the virus is real and very burning. The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare has the potential to assist healthcare providers in many aspects of patient care and administrative processes. From highly sophisticated machines to the administrative record keepings- AI has the potential to be around nearly all major spheres of activity. But for many, it’s still unclear. What is artificial intelligence in healthcare, and what are the benefits people still don’t seem convincingly aware about it.
Using artificial intelligence in healthcare services means to adapt to the most widespread utilization of modern machines for the precision that these offer. Making sense of human language has been a goal of artificial intelligence and healthcare technology, for over 50 years, has been developing modules and equipments that could achieve maximum accuracy and precision. Most NLP systems include forms of speech recognition or text analysis and then translation. A common use of AI in healthcare involves NLP applications that can understand and classify clinical documentation and these systems can analyze unstructured clinical notes on patients, giving incredible insight into understanding quality, improving methods, and better results for patients.
Dental health care workers face at the highest risk of contracting COVID-19. Thus, dental practitioners ought to execute the standard protocols more cautiously during the pandemic. The highly contagious nature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV2), besides the fact that dental procedures commonly generate blood and saliva droplets that could lead to the contagion have resulted in the closure of many dental clinics. And we are aware of this fact that the dentists are the most affected by this virus and chances of infection are more because of patient and dentist close contact.
Now, with the helping hand of AI in dentistry, new methods of treatment will help to reach the goal and it will have truly revolutionary and potentially lifesaving value both systemic health care as well as your dental health care. Besides promising the most accurate diagnosis, laying our proper treatemtn procedures, AI will also help in gaining confidence and build trust of patients who wouldn’t have to suffer for the fear of close contact with their doctors.
This transformation technology is at hand and machine learning grows in population to the volume and variety of data available. More data available for patients’ treatment plans and other factors may influence Dental care Results. People are notoriously slow to adopt new technologies but I fully agree on the fact that this system would bring new level of consistency and clarity in dental care and dental business.
Most obvious benefit that AI can assure us in our fight against covid19 is that large complex datasets can be achieved in quick time and it can predict, 24X7, huge amount of cases with records. Strongest use of Machine learning for COVID-19 including temperature, heart rate, respiration and blood oxygen can be taken with high degree of accuracy.
Finally, I can say that considering the utilities and importance of AI in medical sciences, sooner or later AI is going to form the core of oral health care. It has potential to resolve the issues of time consumption, accessibility and economic viability. The AI technology has the ability to increase oral health awareness and it can also ensure self monitoring feature which can help the dentist-patient relationships.
The writer is a Dental surgeon and implantologist, Clinical Researcher in AI. [email protected]
