Main image courtesy of MI Head and Spine Institute.

One of the most specialized areas of medicine is neurology, which treats conditions dealing with the nervous system, specifically the brain, spine, nerves, and blood vessels. Treatments for these types of issues sometimes include surgery, which is where neurosurgeons fit in—but how can neurosurgeons use AI? That’s a great question, so today we’re discussing:

• AI’s growing role in healthcare
• How neurosurgeons are using AI 
• The benefits of using more AI in neurosurgery

There are already many healthcare fields from psychiatry to family medicine that have embraced the assistance of AI technology. Whether it’s automating the patient journey to ensure tests and follow ups are never missed, to transcribing notes and helping clinicians spend less time on clerical tasks, it’s safe to say AI has been very helpful. But in addition to transcribing information, how can something as specialized as neurosurgery expect to benefit from AI?

AI in healthcare

There are a lot of healthcare professionals who are including AI in their everyday practices

There are so many ways in which AI can improve a healthcare facility and make it not only more streamlined, but give patients a better experience. This is why many clinicians have welcomed its assistance into their hospitals, practices, and other facilities. Most begin integrating AI by starting with an ambient medical scribe that uses natural language processing to listen to and transcribe notes for patient visits. These applications allow the provider to be more present with the patient, instead of dividing their attention between note taking and listening. 

AI scribes are more accurate in their transcriptions than human scribes, and they make it easy for providers to approve a note and sync it with the patient’s EHR, ensuring everyone on their team has access to it. By taking away this tedious (but essential) clerical task from clinicians and automating it, providers are less likely to spend time after work updating notes, which reduces burnout.

Ambient medical scribes reduce costs for facilities, and ensure important information isn’t missed or unintentionally left out due to human error. In addition to helping streamline the administrative part of healthcare facilities, AI can also help improve medical billing and coding practices using machine learning. Because AI can digest massive amounts of information, it learns what codes accurately describe what types of procedures, treatments, and medications—and are more accurate than their human counterparts. The AI will eventually learn to make suggestions for codes so that the claim has a better chance of being approved, which ensures the providers are getting paid timely for their services. 

This is just a brief glimpse into how AI is transforming the healthcare industry, and there is so much potential for it to augment humans by taking away repetitive tasks, preventing burnout, improving financial standing, and increasing accuracy—all of which are crucial in healthcare. 

How do surgeons use AI?

Besides improving the workflow of a healthcare facility and increasing the likelihood that patients are satisfied with their encounter, AI is also being tasked with more complicated procedures. Machines like robots have been used in surgery since the 1980s, but with new technology there are so many ways that AI can be used to help surgeons.

• Diagnostics. Reading charts, scans, and samples is an essential part of many medical specialties, such as radiology or pathology. Physicians must read and interpret their patients’ scans in order to determine if something isn’t right, or if a problem like a tumor has been eliminated. The human error factor can be high in these situations, but using an AI program to also go in and review charts and scans as a fail safe can catch anomalies that a surgeon might have missed. 

• Surgery assistance. AI can help surgeons during their procedures by guiding them and providing an oversight as the surgery progresses. Because it reviews millions of surgical videos of procedures, AI can also make suggestions of what might be more beneficial given the current circumstances. That way the surgeon can decide whether or not to change their current course. 

• Medical education. Learning to be a surgeon takes education and practice, and here AI could help students by guiding them through a surgery as well as explaining it and discussing similar cases. It could also help students learn new skills or track the performance of already licensed surgeons. 

How neurosurgeons are using AI

What types of AI assistance are neurosurgeons using?

As we mentioned earlier, neurosurgery is a specialized field that deals with the nervous system, brain, spinal cord, and associated nerves and vessels. And while this field of specialists can certainly benefit from AI assistance in diagnostics, guidance, and education, there are also a few specific AI advantages that neurosurgeons can benefit from.

Early detection

Early detection of disease or other conditions is essential in so many areas of healthcare, but especially for the nervous system. Neurologists and neurosurgeons can take advantage of AI and use it to increase the chances that something will be caught early so that treatment can start. AI can scan the patient’s medical documentation and review their family history and run it against the chance that something may occur (such as an aneurysm or a tumor). This increases the likelihood that something a human may not have noticed is caught early. 

Thanks to AI’s ability to digest massive amounts of information and use predictive analysis, it not only improves the chance of an earlier detection, but can reduce the chances that the patient requires invasive treatment. Instead, if caught early enough, the condition could be treated without resorting to surgery. 

Customized care for patients

Neurosurgeons can also capitalize on the power of AI to customize care for their patients. Each patient’s medical and genetic history is different, which means the potential results of their treatments can vary. AI can use this data to determine the likelihood that one patient might benefit more from prescription medications, while another should consider a minimally invasive surgery to treat their condition. When neurosurgeons have this kind of information to work with, they’re able to give the patient options, instead of resorting to what they’ve done in the past and seen work with other patients. 

Precision

AI can also assist neurosurgeons during their surgeries by enhancing their precision. As the surgery progresses, AI can analyze the data that the patient is sending back such as heart rate and brain activity, in order to make beneficial suggestions to the neurosurgeon. An AI assistant in the surgery will have learned from large amounts of surgical data and videos, and can make suggestions with a confidence level that humans can’t match. It would be beneficial to surgeons to have the AI along for the surgery to double check what actions will have the highest probability of success and will benefit the patient the most. 

Surgeons can also use this AI assistant to help alert them to any potential complications that either arise from the patient’s response, or to their surgical plan. 

Surgical planning and navigation

In addition to helping neurosurgeons with their precision throughout the surgery, AI can help plan out the best way for a surgeon to perform the surgery. After analyzing all the potential outcomes and knowing how the patient might respond, it can assist the neurosurgeon in planning how to do their job. By making suggestions throughout the course of the surgery, the surgeon can feel more confident that they’re going about the best possible plan of treatment for that particular patient. 

AI can even help with navigation since it can stay several steps ahead of where the neurosurgeon actually is. This helps decrease the chance of complications and increases the chances of beneficial results. 

Did you know you can find AI not only in the surgical theater, but also helping neurosurgeons perfect their skills with life-like simulations? The only way to improve and learn how to perform complex surgeries with greater accuracy and precision is to learn in a virtual environment that not only allows surgeons to practice the task, but receive feedback on how to enhance their skills.

Post-operative monitoring

After the procedure it’s essential to monitor the patient and plan out a postoperative treatment course of action. Here AI can offer suggestions for specific therapies, medications, or rehabilitation programs that will likely give the greatest benefit and ensure the best recovery possible to that particular patient. Again, AI works well at personalizing the care of each patient based on their medical data, condition, and response to prior treatment. 

Neurosurgeons can also employ AI technology to monitor the status of the patient’s vitals post-surgery to help detect an issue before it escalates.

Big data analysis to improve

Neurosurgeons are always looking to improve outcomes for patients, and to plan treatments that can offer the best results. They can use AI to analyze the results of certain procedures or treatments in order to make a better diagnosis and isolate areas where they can improve upon how they coordinate care for patients. 

How is AI used in neurology?

Neurologists are also specialists who treat conditions relating to the nervous system, much like neurosurgeons, but they do not perform surgery. Instead they are experts at the diagnosis and non-surgical treatment of brain, spine, and nervous system complications. They use physical examinations, medication, implanted devices, and physical therapy to treat patients, and often consult with neurosurgeons. 

AI can also assist neurologists in a variety of ways, contributing to accurate diagnosis and better treatment for patients.

• Better diagnostic analysis. Like neurosurgeons, neurologists can benefit from the speed that AI can analyze large amounts of data and notice anomalies that a human may miss.

• Predictive treatments. Using patient data, neurologists can rely on AI to help them find the type of personalized treatment that will give a patient the most beneficial results.

• Drug development. AI is also being used by drug companies to assist with the development, refining, and manufacturing of medications that could benefit patients.

• Medical devices. If a patient requires an implantable device, it can be programmed with AI technology to give the neurologist feedback about how the patient is doing and how they respond to certain treatments.

Benefits of including more AI in neurosurgery

Recap - How AI can help neurosurgeons

• Improves diagnostic readings of scans, records, and charts to catch something that a neurosurgeon might miss. AI can also review and digest massive amounts of data in much less time than a human.
• Can help with predictive treatments or surgeries and personalize the care of the patient.
• Improves physician precision and decision making during the surgery.
• Can monitor patients after surgery and suggest the best therapies and medications.
• AI can always learn and improve with access to more data.

What can AI do for your healthcare facility?

If you think AI could be a beneficial addition to your neurosurgery (or other healthcare field) practice, then consider looking into one of the best with Playback. AI technology can assist neurosurgeons when it comes to planning, navigating, and monitoring a neurosurgery procedure, but did you also know that AI scribes can also help complete patient charts and transcribe the procedure for the surgeon? Let AI help your neurosurgery practice get to the next level of patient care.