The Future of Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence

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June 2, 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The term may also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving. In recent years, patients and clinicians benefited increasingly from the growing use of AI in a care environment, especially in cognitive conditions. In our recent webinar, we were joined by the CEO and CTO of Memory Lane Games and The Head of Marketing at Helping Hands, to discuss and understand how they’re using AI to enrich both the lives of patients and carers.

The speakers

Bruce Elliot: digital dementia therapy app that uses reminiscence therapy, gamification, and AI machine learning to delight and engage dementia patients and their carers all over the world. They have had over 12,000 downloads this month, a top 100 health and fitness app on the iPad UK charts. It is a free app that caters to area specifics, such as cities, towns, and monuments in your location, along with “finish the lyrics” and birdwatching. They are more than just games, however, as they are running an RCT clinical trial with 30 patients and carers to determine the effect of personalised dementia therapy on quality of life on both respected partners.

Tom Coldwell: CTO of Memory Lane Games and works on aiding with the platform.

Mark Beavan: Head of marketing at Helping Hands homecare, which specialises in visiting care and a living service when they move someone into a loved one’s house to look after them. His background is more-or-less a digital native and his main goal is looking at what the company can create to encapsulate special moments for their customers and to add value as a care provider by supplying tools to aid with the looking after.

Innovators in health and social care

Memory Lane Games is digital dementia therapy app that uses reminiscence therapy, gamification, and AI machine learning to delight and engage dementia patients and their carers all around the world. With over 12,000 downloads this month alone, they are also in the top 100 health and fitness apps on the iPad UK charts. The free app uses images and information from local areas and interests to help reignite memories and capture attention. This can range from local towns and cities, to football, birdwatching and finishing the lyrics of popular songs from a particular point in time. But Memory Lane Games is more than just a game. They are making a difference to the lives of those affected by dementia, helping to improve quality of life for patients and carers a like. To highlight the true value of the digital therapeutic both holistically and clinically, they are about to launch a randomized control trial with 30 patients and carers to quantify the impact of their personalised dementia therapy on quality of life on both respected partners.

Helping Hands Homecare is a family-led home care provider with over 30 years’ experience in ensuring that adults of all ages have the care they need. They have provided care for 40,000 families across 140 local branches nation wide. This care can vary from at-home care visits to full 24/7 living facilities to cater to a wide range of medical needs, with huge experience in dementia. As an organisation, they’re always looking for new ways to add value as a care provider by supplying tools to aid with the looking after.

AI in Healthcare

Artificial Intelligence is used right across health and care, from clinical services such as radiology, diagnostics, and remote monitoring, right through to innovations with a more consumer focus. Memory Lane Games neatly bridges this gap, as a free service appealing directly to families and carers, with increasing interest amongst the clinical community from geriatric care, through to neurology and speech and language therapy.

In healthcare, AI in image classification is becoming increasingly common, detecting cancerous cells in scans and recommending the right antibiotic treatments which is critically important with increasing antibiotic resistance.

Natural language processing uses AI to digitises speech and extracting the semantic meaning. A good example is the Google model, GPT3, which takes speech and text and translates the meaning and context behind it to offer the most appropriate advice or help. Interestingly, it is also able to detect if someone is depressed from based on their communication nuances, and as a result can determine the right support.

An important challenge with AI that has yet to be fully address is bias. For example, the data inputted into the models is selected, tagged, and monitored by a human, which in itself creates inherent bias. Digital health innovation in Scotland has a fantastic platform that has anonymised data in the Cloud where you can train these models in a safe environment, and this aids AI researchers to ensure that they are not creating a biased model. The more anonymised the data, the better!

Back to the future

Looking to the future, Memory Lane Games will be increasingly leveraging the power of AI. They will be able to create better game predictions using metrics and question response patterns. These data will then pass through the Recurrent Neural Net that uses time series analysis to optimise those performance metrics in-game, which then indicates cognitive performance and ability and creates better, more personalized game recommendations.

Users will also be able to link their medical records so that when coupled with predictions and patterns from their game play, it will be able to give an indication of speed cognitive decline and stage of disease progression, whilst recommending appropriate support, management and care.

AI continues to play will play a role of growing importance for Memory Lane Games, on their mission to improve the lives of patients and carers globally, by bringing the right games to the right people to facilitate recall of positive memories and start conversations.

The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between the patient and carer, creating conversations that give an insight into the patient’s life and capturing cognitive data. Another feature they’re currently working on is personalised games, which will enable families and carers to create games based on photos and memories from that person’s life, in turn, creating an identifiable story that empowers everyone affected.

All the games on the app are created by volunteers, and Memory Lane Games are always open to suggestions and ideas for games and quizzes. If you would like to help or have any ideas, then get in touch with Tristan Dugmore.

We’ve got plenty more fantastic industry experts lined up for 2021 to take part in our webinar series. If you’d like to find out more or to get involved as a speaker yourself then please get in touch with Robert Taylor.

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