The results of recent research have broad implications for dementia treatment.
More individuals are surviving into old age globally thanks to improvements in public health over the last several decades. Dementia, notably Alzheimer’s disease, and other conditions that are often linked to aging are as a result seeing a major rise. This might impede the ability to provide prompt treatment to individuals in need, especially in light of a predicted physician shortage in the next decades.

According to a recent study by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), computational techniques (artificial intelligence/AI) may be able to help alleviate some of the challenges associated with delivering dementia care to an aging population.

“Even in circumstances where a specialized neurologist or neuro-radiologist is busy to directly provide a diagnosis, it is foreseeable that some degree of automation could step in to help, thereby enabling doctors and their patients to plan treatment accordingly,” explains corresponding author Vijaya B. Kolachalama, Ph.D., FAHA, assistant professor of medicine at BUSM.

The researchers’ findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Research from the past has shown that AI models can choose between “disease” and “no disease” in a simple manner, but that is not how clinicians treat patients. Rather, they must take into account all potential conditions that could be impacting a patient in their clinic, depending on physical examination, neuropsychological testing, laboratory results, and imaging to establish a distinctive signature that solidifies the diagnosis. This research, in Kolachalama’s opinion, is much more in line with this “real world” situation since it enables a computer to zero down on the actual cause of a patient’s disease even when there are other possibilities.

https://scitechdaily.com/a-breakthrough-in-dementia-care-ai-can-diagnose-dementia-as-accurately-as-experts/