Amazon is bringing AI to help read medical records

In the latest development in its move into the healthcare industry, Amazon Web Services has begun to sell software to mine patient medical records for information that could aid doctors and hospitals in improving treatment and cutting costs.

The company's software is able to read digitized patient records, analyse them and compile the most useful information into a spreadsheet-like report.

AWS has also been selling text-analysis software to companies in the travel, customer support and supply-chain management industries though this is the first time Amazon has offered it to the healthcare industry.

Additionally the company is also looking to expand its sales of medical supplies through an app which will use electronic medical records to allow doctors to send links to products needed for their treatment to patients.

AWS AI skills

Amazon's software developers used deep learning to train their system to recognise doctors' notes which have notoriously been difficult for even other people to read.

General Manager of AI at AWS Matt Wood explained how accurate the company's software was to the Wall Street Journal, saying:

“We’re able to completely, automatically look inside medical language and identify patient details,” including diagnoses, treatments, dosage and strengths, “with incredibly high accuracy.”

The software will first be used to assist the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center which aided Amazon in testing and training its algorithm to identify patients that are eligible for studies of experimental drugs.

The data processed by AWS will be encrypted so that only customers with the key will be able to access it.

Via WSJ