Science View S2023E12 - Special Episode: AI Hospitals - A Step Towards the Future

AI hospitals in Japan started as a project with a vision in which people can have access to high-quality healthcare anywhere in the country. It also aims to improve the well-being of healthcare providers, leading to compassionate patient care. Now, how far has AI hospitals come? Hospital care includes AI patient questionnaires, digital management of hospital beds, robotic drug dispensing and delivery, standing CT, robotic dogs powered by AI, and bed sensors that measure respiration and heart rate. Technologies are not limited to AI and involve robotics and digital technologies. Efforts using technology to eliminate disparities in healthcare are also gaining attention. For example, using AI to make a pathological diagnosis for cancer. Another is to use AI to identify the bacteria that cause blood poisoning. By feeding various images, AI is able to identify the types of bacteria in just 10 seconds at the level of a specialist. Reporter Michelle Yamamoto is joined by Dr. Yusuke Nakamura, an advocate of AI hospitals and a world-renowned expert in cancer immunotherapy and genetic research, to discuss the progress AI hospitals have made as well as the challenges they face.