Australia can become a world leader in the application of AI in healthcare, but there is still much work to do to maximize the benefits of the technology.
The company predicts the healthcare AI market as follows: Grow to $1.78 billion by 2030 That's up from $80 million last year. AI holds the key to a “smarter, more adaptive health system” in Australia that can withstand new demands such as increased disease complexity, treatment intensity and future pandemics.
The country may have what it takes to apply AI in health care, including digital infrastructure, decades of research, and a highly functional health system, but the opportunities and risks of an AI-enabled health system are uncertain. The Australian Alliance for AI in Healthcare (AAAiH) says it is “currently unprepared” to deal with this.
First, the current AI regulatory model was designed more than 30 years ago when the technology was “single-function and predictable.”
The existing healthcare AI industry is relatively small compared to other developed countries. For example, the US has so far approved more than 500 new AI-powered medical devices, while the UK government has invested £2.3 billion ($2.9 billion in AI initiatives over the past few years). is being spent, including £250 million ($315 million) to accelerate the uptake of AI in the National Health Service.
Australia is also lagging behind in research investment in healthcare AI.; overall healthcare AI research capacity lacks global competitiveness, and its R&D support falls far short of what is available in other countries. Over the past five years, not a single clinical trial on AI has been conducted in this country, and local AI research has attracted only 0.9% of total government funding.
Considering these limitations, AAAiH National policy roadmap for AI in healthcare We aim to bring Australia to the level of other countries that are already making significant progress in investing in and deploying healthcare AI.
The first version of the roadmap was released two years ago. Since then, technological developments, including the introduction of generative AI, have led the Alliance to reconvene and update its stakeholders. Laying the foundation for maximizing the benefits of AI, the new roadmap provides 16 recommendations across his five priority areas:
- AI safety, quality, ethics, and security
- Labor force
- consumer
- industry
- the study
“AI offers new opportunities to improve clinical diagnosis, treatment and workflow. From the research bench to the clinical bedside and into the hands of patients, AI is making Australian healthcare more agile, “We are committed to a learning system that is adaptive, personalized, safe, effective, and fair,” the roadmap emphasized.
Development of this roadmap was supported by Macquarie University, the CSIRO Australian eHealth Research Centre, RMIT University, the Digital Health Collaborative Research Center and the Australian Institute of Digital Health.
On record
Enrico Coiella, professor at Macquarie University and founder of AAAiH, said governance must be a high priority for the federal government among the urgent areas of healthcare AI. It is said that governance needs to move from a “certify once” model to a “model that ensures adaptive AI remains fit for purpose as it evolves.”
“Australia must act quickly to protect patients and support the healthcare and AI sectors, while leveraging the benefits of AI and mitigating risks,” he said in a media release.
