NEWS
Germany leads in developing artificial
intelligence for healthcare
A
rtificial intelligence (AI) has
the potential to revolutionise
healthcare in the next 10 years, say
German researchers and a study by the
international business consulting firm
PwC Germany.
The work of a number of German
research facilities, including the German
Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
(DFKI) and 29 Fraunhofer institutes, is
paving the way for technologies that
PwC says could reduce healthcare costs
by more than 170 billion in Europe in the
coming decade.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Published in June, PwC’s study, Sherlock
Health, focused on three common ailments;
obesity in children, breast cancer and
dementia. It said that AI could use health
data to predict which individuals were likely
to fall ill with these diseases and allow
people to take preventive measures before
they became patients.
The Healthcare & Pharma Leader PwC
Germany, Michael Burkhart, said: “… AI only
works on the basis of enormous stores of data
and these must be resolutely established.
Nevertheless, the potential benefits of AI
are so great that the effort is undoubtedly
worth it.” Germany is playing a leading
role in R&D dedicated to reaping AI’s
medical potential. With five sites around
Germany, the DFKI is currently the biggest
AI research centre worldwide in terms of
number of employees and the volume of
external funds.
It is self-financed through research
commissions. Among the DFKI projects
that have medical applications are
interactive textiles, cyber-physical
systems, including the Bremen Ambient
Assisted Living Lab and intelligent
analytics for massive data – smart data.
www.intelligentcio.com