The Breadth Of Healthcare Applications Of Artificial Intelligence Even Includes Physical Therapy Posted on : Nov 11 - 2020

This column keeps returning to the healthcare industry because it is so much more complex and varied than so many others. Artificial intelligence (AI) coverage has focused on radiology, has moved to the operating theater, and has been discussed in the back office. Insurance and pharma fraud are arenas where AI risk analysis is useful. Now, along comes another area that is amenable to AI solutions. It’s something many people think of as secondary, but is really a critical part of healthcare: physical therapy.

As someone who, many years ago, had an intriguing car crash, and who, not as many years ago, also proved he wasn’t as young as he thought he was, by blowing out a knee, I’m someone who is very aware of the need for physical therapy (PT). The basics of PT seem very simple: design therapies that cause repeated motions of damaged body parts, analyze that motion, then provide feedback to the patient and the medical community in order to help both improve. It’s the capture and analysis of impact (yes, pun intended) of that motion which can prove complex.

Human physical therapists can see a lot of movement, but it’s impossible for them to capture all the necessary information. SWORD Health is a company focused on this unique healthcare segment. As they are a young company, they are focusing on a few key therapy areas. “The hip, knee, lower back, shoulder, wrist and neck comprise more than 90 percent of all musculoskeletal issues in the U.S.,” said Virgilio Bento, CEO, SWORD Health. “Rehabilitating them remotely requires a technology that can learn and expand.”

One Way Around Gender Bias In Testing

One intriguing area that supports a separate call out section is the oft problematic issue of bias in testing. We know that visual neural networks have had problems identifying women of color. We know that, outside of AI, many drug trials don’t include children, pregnant women, and other demographics who will need those drugs. Physical therapy is a healthcare sector that can avoid those problems.

There is already a body of PT information on the wide variety of demographics who receive PT. The ability to track far more information and to analyze it with demographic information (even anonymized for privacy), means that treatments can start with far more segmentation based on available information and then been quickly tuned on an individual basis based on direct, specific results. Starting with patterns based on more detailed segmentation and then transforming treatment on a case-by-case basis removes the bias issues that may be inherent in other areas of medicine or even in the minds of some medical personnel. View More