With Alzheimer’s disease so prevalent in senior care and living communities, artificial intelligence is being increasingly implemented in many tools to help treat patients. In the latest example, researchers from LSU Health Shreveport are using AI to detect the disease and optimize treatment for patients.
The LSU Health research team is developing a disease progression model for Alzheimer’s using AI, training it to identify and classify illnesses based on images and personalize treatment for Alzheimer’s patients. Using large amounts of data, AI can predict outcomes to help patients based on their specific needs. This could make a big difference in helping senior care teams in the care of residents with Alzheimer’s.
“It can be very fruitful for the patient and in the healthcare industry,” Mohommad Alrad Nobel Bhuiyan, a doctor on the LSU Health Shreveport team, told WNTZ-TV. “When you have a vast amount of data, the prediction and the risk assessment is much more accurate than the normal or small sample size.”
AI is being used in other ways to help senior living residents who have Alzheimer’s. For example, it’s helping improve speech recognition and analysis, which often impacts Alzheimer’s patients. Software company Canary Speech announced it will use Microsoft’s AI technology to expand its machine learning speech models and make AI-backed speech analysis faster.
Elsewhere in the marketplace, new AI-backed research and tools are helping identify patients with dementia earlier and faster to help slow Alzheimer’s progression. Columbia University’s School of Nursing researchers are creating an AI method that screens seniors for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early dementia by analyzing their voices. Nearly one in five people 60 and older in the U.S. are living with MCI, and 10% to 15% of people with MCI will develop Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia within a year, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
