Discovery Turns To Ai For 'hyper-personalised Health Care'

Premised on the principle of "hyper-personalisation", Personal Health Pathways uses the idea of a digital twin, or a "clinic twin" in the company's jargon, to give real-time recommendations to members with the idea of creating a proactive, curated approach to health care.

According to Discovery Health CEO Ron Whelan, who was speaking to TechCentral in a recent interview, the use of advanced machine learning and AI models is allowing a targeted approach, which improves outcomes for patients while, over time, reducing costs for Discovery Health.

"Healthcare is inordinately complex and has always run on a set of algorithms, rules, protocols and guidelines. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, we are able to see new patterns and trends. More importantly, we are able to use those patterns on an individualised basis to deliver health care that is more precise," Whelan said.

"We saw an opportunity to use Discovery Health's big data set, together with an advanced AI model, to create these precise and personalised pathways this was not possible before the advent of artificial intelligence."

Whelan said the model creates many possible actions and ranks them according to their efficacy, but this alone is not what determines whether a recommendation will be made. Another factor is the likelihood that a medical aid member will perform the action, or stick to a given routine. The highest-value action with the greatest chance of being completed is then recommended to the user. Users are rewarded when their actions are completed, and just like the recommendations, the rewards are also individualised.