Breaking the ‘intellectual bottleneck’: How AI is computing the previously uncomputible in healthcare

Whenever a patient gets a CT scan at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), the resulting images are automatically sent off to the cardiology department, analyzed by AI and assigned a cardiac risk score. 

In just a few months, thanks to a simple algorithm, AI has flagged several patients at high cardiovascular risk. The CT scan doesn’t have to be related to the heart; the patient doesn’t have to have heart problems. Every scan automatically triggers an evaluation. 

It is straightforward preventative care enabled by AI, allowing the medical facility to finally start utilizing their vast amounts of data. 

“The data is just sitting out there,” Peter McCaffrey, UTMB’s chief AI officer, told VentureBeat. “What I love about this is that AI doesn’t have to do anything superhuman. It’s performing a low intellect task, but at very high volume, and that still provides a ...