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Artificial Intelligence & Data Gathering in Healthcare
Part 1: Early Benefits
Since as long ago as the 1850’s scientists have realized the benefits to public health of collecting mass data to establish where people’s mannerisms and habits at work and play affected their environment concerning diseases.
In the renowned case of the Cholera epidemic in London’s Soho district back in 1854, a famous Doctor John Snow walked the streets and knocked on doors to map out where the disease was concentrated to prove his theory against the medical establishment of the times, that the disease was borne by foul water. That was one of the first examples of Data gathering to assist healthcare.
Many of us are suspicious of the authorities’ gathering data on the population, and rightly so when used to track our views and politics, but where healthcare is concerned, it has proved essential. The comparison of personal data across the discovery of treatments and the progress of new viruses are now used worldwide to find cures for the benefit of humankind.
From the early 1900s, Ernest Codman, a medical reformer who ruffled a few establishment feathers in the USA, stated that the use of data was “one of the greatest moments in medicine.” He was a driving force in the use of data-driven reforms. One successful campaign involved a “Registry of Bone…
