The lights were dimmed in an auditorium packed with doctors\u00a0on Wednesday night at London\u2019s Royal College of Physicians. They were there to find out how AI might fundamentally change the way they work.<\/p>\n
On stage Dr. Mobasher Butt, a director at digital healthcare startup Babylon Health, stood before a podium to read out the results of an exam taken by his company’s\u00a0carefully trained\u00a0AI doctor.<\/p>\n
The average passmark for the MRCGP exam, which trainee\u00a0general practitioners take to\u00a0test their\u00a0ability to diagnose,\u00a0has been\u00a072% over the past five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did Babylon Health do?\u201d he asked, before waiting a beat. \u201cIt got 82%.\u201d Several people clapped loudly, sparking applause from the rest of the audience. The AI had beat human doctors handily.<\/p>\n
Babylon has been developing its own artificial intelligence software for the last two years, an ambitious endeavour since\u00a0hiring the engineers needed to build your own AI is eye-wateringly expensive and the return on investment\u00a0can be hit and miss. AI models can become brittle and fail if they\u2019re subjected to a confusing array of environmental factors.<\/p>\n
But for now, the artificial doctor\u2019s brain built by Babylon, which has raised $85 million since its founding five\u00a0years ago, works when it\u2019s put in a test environment. And while regulations limit it to providing medical advice only, it may be only a matter of time before it\u2019s trusted to make a diagnosis and even write a prescription.<\/p>\n
The startup\u2019s charismatic founder, Ali Parsa, has called it a world first and a major step towards his ambitious goal of putting accessible healthcare in the hands of everyone on the planet. \u201cFive billion people globally have no access to surgery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Without adequate primary care either, \u201ca $10 problem becomes a $100 solution.\u201d But catch it early with a robo-doctor like Babylon\u2019s, and Parsa believes he\u00a0can stop an illness from becoming an expensive problem for a state provider like the National Health Service or an insurer.<\/p>\n
In some cases that means using\u00a0Babylon\u2019s\u00a0intelligent chatbot\u00a0to prevent a unnecessary consultation by\u00a0\u201creassuring\u201d people that they don\u2019t need to see a live doctor, Parsa said in a separate\u00a0interview with\u00a0Forbes<\/em>\u00a0at Babylon\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n He points out, a little ambitiously, that Bablyon\u2019s end-to-end clinical service, which blends\u00a0medical advice from humans and software,\u00a0can deliver a diagnosis more cheaply over time when taking into\u00a0consideration that two thirds of\u00a0healthcare costs come from people\u2019s salaries.<\/p>\n Bablyon sells directly to consumers or providers access to its network of 250 work-from-home\u00a0doctors whom\u00a0people can video-call on their mobiles. It also sells access to medical-advice software that people can use to investigate an ailment.<\/p>\n It is the latter feature that Parsa has spent the last two years heavily investing in, so that his human doctors are freed up from note-taking and diagnosing common illnesses,\u00a0to looking after more complicated problems. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to see a doctor for a diagnosis,\u201d Parsa told\u00a0Forbes.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cWhat you want is a treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n In the demonstration on Wednesday night, a large screen above Parsa showed an animated, 3-D web of symptoms and diseases, as\u00a0the voice of a\u00a0woman resounded through the auditorium,\u00a0answering automated questions from a chatbot about her recent dizzy spells.<\/p>\n As she answered the questions, a table showed the\u00a0software constantly readjusting her likely ailments, before\u00a0settling on an 80%-probability that she had M\u00e9ni\u00e8re\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n At the heart of this chatbot was Babylon\u2019s diagnostic engine, which its engineers are\u00a0constantly training with data from\u00a0its interactions\u00a0with humans (and which has now\u00a0passed\u00a0the\u00a0doctor\u2019s exam).<\/p>\n The screen then filled with text\u00a0and graphics, the interface that Bablyon\u2019s doctors see when they video-call with patients. An image of the woman calling in was covered in a digital web of lines\u2014a facial tracking system that told the doctor if she was feeling confused, worried or neutral, based on the movements of 117 muscles in her nose, lips or eyebrows.<\/p>\n As they spoke, another box on the side of the screen was transcribing their\u00a0conversation and categorizing it into sections.<\/p>\n In another box was a graphical, translucent illustration of the woman\u2019s body, highlighting her organs and muscles. This was her \u201cdigital twin,\u201d and over time, Parsa said, Babylon\u2019s software would be able to make predictions about which parts of the body were most at risk of illness or disease, by running a vast number of simulations on the twin.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to agree with our AI assessment,\u201d said the live, human doctor who was featured in another box on the screen, after he asked the woman a few more questions. \u201cIt looks like you\u2019ve got M\u00e9ni\u00e8re\u2019s disease.\u00a0I\u2019d like to prescribe something called prochlorperazine. I\u2019ll send that prescription to your usual pharmacy.\u201d<\/p>\n As the demo ended,\u00a0Parsa walked back\u00a0on stage and asked doctors in the audience how much time they spent\u00a0writing doctor\u2019s notes. \u201cAbout 50% of my time,\u201d answered\u00a0Megan Mahoney, who was chief of general primary care and population health at Stanford University, and who had\u00a0overseen Babylon\u2019s test.<\/p>\n Such is Parsa\u2019s pitch to healthcare providers: Use his service\u00a0and\u00a0doctors can spend their time more efficiently. Over time, you won\u2019t need to hire quite so many of them.<\/p>\n Parsa\u2019s most important customer\u00a0till now has been Britain\u2019s state-run NHS, which since last year has allowed\u00a026,000 citizens in London to switch from its physical GP clinics to Babylon\u2019s service instead.<\/p>\n Another 20,000 are on a waiting list to join. The NHS pays\u00a0Babylon\u00a0an\u00a0average\u00a0of\u00a0$80 per patient each year, which is on par with what it pays a typical doctor\u2019s clinic; older people and those with chronic illnesses cost in the range of $2-$300\u00a0while younger, healthier people can cost as little as\u00a0$30.<\/p>\n Now Parsa is\u00a0bringing\u00a0his software service and virtual doctor network to insurers in the U.S. His pitch is that the smarter and more \u201creassuring\u201d his AI-powered chatbot gets, the more likely patients across the Atlantic\u00a0are to resolve their issues with software alone.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a model that could save providers millions, potentially, but Parsa has yet to secure a big-name American customer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe American market is much more tuned to the economics of healthcare,\u201d he said from his office. \u201cWe\u2019re talking to everyone: insurers, employers, health systems. They have massive gaps in delivery of the care.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe will set up physical and virtual clinics, and\u00a0AI\u00a0services in the United States,\u201d he said, adding that Babylon would be\u00a0operational with U.S. clinics\u00a0in\u00a02019, starting state by state. \u201cFor a fixed fee, we take total responsibility\u00a0for\u00a0the cost of primary care.\u201d<\/p>\n Parsa isn\u2019t shy about his transatlantic ambitions: \u201cI think the U.S. will be our biggest market shortly,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n If he can eventually\u00a0quantify the cost savings\u00a0that his\u00a0automated-care\u00a0model can bring to a provider like the NHS, he might have\u00a0a chance.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Forbes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The lights were dimmed in an auditorium packed with doctors\u00a0on Wednesday night at London\u2019s Royal College of Physicians. They were there to find out how AI might fundamentally change the way they work. On stage Dr. Mobasher Butt, a director at digital healthcare startup Babylon Health, stood before a podium to read out the results …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2346,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions\/2346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}