Most women have a busier life and less disposable income than men, and it often compels them to ignore early health warnings and shelve their diagnostic plans. As a result, periodic health checkups do not figure at the top of their agenda. The tendency is prevalent among working women as they are busy doing their double role as homemaker and career woman. Quite often, this laxity is a major reason for women getting diagnosed with diseases at an advanced stage.
Access to quality healthcare still remains a dream for millions of women, particularly in the South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa regions. Notably, women’s healthcare is chronically underfunded, which often results in misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, or insufficient treatment. Historically, research and development (R&D) spend in women’s healthcare has been lower due to various reasons such as gender bias and poor purchasing power. Clearly, there is a significant gap in the healthcare solutions that specifically address women’s needs.
Now, technology stands at the forefront to ensure equitable healthcare access to everyone. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics in healthcare has unleashed a revolution that has the potential to transform women’s healthcare arena. For example, AI-based wearable devices facilitate preliminary screening at home itself, providing valuable inputs for advanced diagnoses and improved treatment outcomes.
In many countries, AI has taken over the job of preparing patient’s history, which was earlier done by junior doctors. Chatbots are widely being used in clinics to perform this task which, to a greater extent, ensures women’s privacy and round-the-clock service. Patients don’t have to wait for a junior doctor to come and take down their medical history.
Further, AI-enabled diagnostic tools are profusely used in preparing automated lab reports, scan results and apps that track all vital parameters such as blood pressure, oxygen level, and women’s menstrual cycle. In fact, AI is helping doctors to simply outsource preliminary work and focus more on delivering critical care.
Fundamentally, AI is useful in predicting health problems much before they come into view. Even psychological and behavioural issues such as postpartum depression and mood swings can also be detected using this technology. The AI tools can detect chemical changes in genes that may lead people to psychological disorders or serious hormonal imbalances. They use personal biomarkers to determine the likelihood of developing such diseases. Ultimately, this approach enables women to be cautiously proactive rather than reactive while confronting some critical periods of life such as pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause.
These innovations are also useful in making treatment plans intensely private or personalized. Exclusive treatment plans can be designed on the basis of one’s age, health condition, proclivities and priorities. Thus, innovations bring optimism and hope, making health screening and diagnoses affordable and accessible to the less-privileged communities.
In other words, AI provides innovative tools that address long-standing disparities, improve treatment outcomes, and empower women to make informed decisions about their health. Rectifying these deep-rooted anomalies is vital not only in gender perspective but also to unlock the full potential of an economy as women constitute a significant part of the working population.
More importantly, AI brings women to the centre of medical research as most clinical trials were earlier based on male physiology. With the abundance of female-focussed data, generated by AI-enabled devices, researchers can distinguish how a medicine or therapy is affecting both male and female bodies. Precisely, AI can analyse gender-specific variations/ results happening in a human body while administering a medication. Thus, AI-driven devices contribute significantly to make medical research and innovations more inclusive and gender sensitive.
In future, women will be able to go to a kiosk any time (24×7) and interact with a robot for primary consultation. Or they can join consultation from home using virtual tools that give women immense freedom and convenience in seeking early screening and medical care.
The article has been written by Dr. Bilal Thangal T M, Medical Lead, NURA
