How K Health is using AI to change healthcare
This article is part of our “How AI is changing the world” event series, held in San Francisco, New York, and Tel Aviv from June to November 2019, featuring insights by leading scientists and entrepreneurs on how AI will change healthcare, communication, agriculture, travel, and other industries. Check out all 12 talks here.
******
K Health is an app that re-envisions a patient's visit to a doctor's office. Rather than spending time traveling to a doctor's office, waiting to be seen, and finally getting a diagnosis, K Health provides a personalized app that facilitates a conversation about your symptoms with your healthcare provider.
K Health is not a "doctor-in-an-app" solution, it's a tool for sharing information that is extracted from millions of medical records. "The problem you have or the issue you're facing quite frankly is probably something that someone else similar to you as has dealt with and you that this could be solved with the data and smart people behind it," says Scott Chesrwon, senior vice president of operations at K Health.
After answering about 20 questions via the app, users can see the outcome of similar conditions people have. Based on that feedback, they then have the option to talk with a doctor about their own personal situation.
K Health uses AI to analyze anonymized medical records to develop profiles of outcomes for more than 300 conditions. Each profile includes different personal characteristics, such as age, sex, and other health information. These outcomes are matched to a patient's condition to help doctors understand how a particular condition will evolve, and what action to take in order to treat it.
The data K Health has collected goes beyond simple "if condition X then treatment Y" type of reasoning. "It was clear when that process was unfolding that this was not something that you could just build a protocol around and say, 'if headache, then this,'" says Scott. "The data, or the process of pulling apart what's wrong with you as a human, is complex."