Applications of Machine Learning in Healthcare

Abstract

Machine learning techniques in healthcare use the increasing amount of health data provided by the Internet of Things to improve patient outcomes. These techniques provide promising applications as well as significant challenges. The three main areas machine learning is applied to include medical imaging, natural language processing of medical documents, and genetic information. Many of these areas focus on diagnosis, detection, and prediction. A large infrastructure of medical devices currently generates data but a supporting infrastructure is oftentimes not in place to effectively utilize such data. The many different forms medical information exist in also creates some challenges in data formatting and can increase noise. We examine a brief history of machine learning, some basic knowledge regarding the techniques, and the current state of this technology in healthcare.