How AI Can Help Improve Health and Well-Being

by Floyd A. Brown

The human heart is a miraculous organ. It beats about 10,000 per day and billions of times over the course of a lifetime (Emory Heart & Vascular Center, 2024) . The heart is strong, but it is not immune to disease. In fact, the number one cause of death in 2021, globally, is ischemic heart disease (World Health Organization, 2024). To improve well-being and tackle heart ailments and other leading causes of death such as stroke, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, we can use the power of AI to understand the nature of these diseases, fast track drug test and research for cures and management of preventive care (BBC, 2020).

Artificial Intelligence machine learning algorithms excel at analyzing large datasets offered in analyzing a heartbeat over time and changing situations, stress, joy, work, playing sports…etc. AI can emulate human “intelligence” as a scientist does in discovering new patterns, which can result in the provision of medical insights and categorization for appropriate treatments. However, AI is highly adaptive to making an impact in the end-to-end process of our healthcare, from the preventive and lifestyle stages, to diagnosis, research, development, and testing of cures, to managing patient care and recovery.
The US healthcare system is burdened by inflated cost of care, lack of sufficient nurses and doctors, fraud prevention, and transparency (Chemweno, 2021). AI is ideal for application at almost any stage of the health care ecosystem, due to the high number of features and data accumulated over centuries by human knowledge gathered through practice, observations and research that formed the foundation and growth to include technology, medical schools, hospital systems and overall modernization and standardization of healthcare. In applying the calculus of AI to health care in three areas preventive through mobile device monitoring, research, and transparency, can lead to improvement in driving down cost of care and improving efficiency in medical services.

For example, among the strategies to prevent heart disease include exercising an hour per day, quality sleep and managing stress (Mayo Clinic, 2023). We can use AI driven wearable devices and apps such as smartwatches to monitor heart rate, and chart performance of our heart over time to document any signs of blood flow issues, irregular heart rate and other indicators of an issue. We can also use AI apps to recommend healthy eating and recipes, monitor sleep patterns and interactive apps to manage our time to include stress reducing activities such as going to the gym or practicing yoga. AI can monitor wearable data, make recommendations, and provide health advice that promotes preventive care and a healthy lifestyle (Emory Heart & Vascular Center, 2024).

AI can help to drive down costs for healthcare for families by analyzing medical bills across insurance providers and health industries to minimize systematic fraud by matching symptoms, procedures and expected costs to reduce erroneous billing or incorrect treatments. AI can also help to ensure the shortage of doctors is addressed with deep learning systems that perform pattern recognition on images for broken bones or tumors (Amod, 2025) and medical diagnostic summary reports, thus enabling them to spend time with more patients than being trapped in the lab, away from bedsides, looking at charts and diagnostic tests. There are multiple concerns about the use of AI in monitoring people’s health as there is much room for improvement to practice ethical AI that respects privacy, excludes bias, and promotes accountability.

AI is not the end all be all solution for well-being and great health across nations. Global measures of well-being and happiness are topped by countries such as Finland, Iceland, and Brazil (US News, 2024)that do not have high numbers of AI research programs. While nations such as the United States that have the highest concentration of AI resources and capital ran lower in health care and well-being. It is possible to use AI to help nations improve their place on health and well-being index.

As AI continues to diffuse globally to bring improved health care, an area of concern is with the importance of implementing it responsibly to protecting human dignity, privacy, and ethical practice (Mullan, 2024) which are hallmarks of civilization. AI’s application to improving well-being is groundbreaking and revolutionizing health care. The potential gains in new treatments, improved care, cost saving procedures are massive. However, concerns for ethical use of data used to build AI models and privacy of data from unauthorized use are just as critical to creating improved health and well-being for all families.

References

Amod, F. (2025, January 28). Deep learning in healthcare. HIPAA compliant email – Paubox. https://www.paubox.com/blog/deep-learning-in-healthcare

Chemweno, J. (2021, July 27). The U.S. healthcare system is broken: A national perspective. Managed Healthcare Executive. https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-u-s-healthcare-system-is-broken-a-national-perspective

Emory Heart & Vascular Center. (2024, February 13). Understanding your heart rate. Atlanta Hospitals, Clinics and Healthcare – Atlanta, GA – Emory Healthcare. https://www.emoryhealthcare.org/stories/heart-health/understanding-your-heart-rate

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2023, August 17). Top strategies to prevent heart disease. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/in-depth/heart-disease-prevention/art-20046502

Mullan, I. (2024, August 16). Health equity and ethical considerations in using artificial intelligence in public health and medicine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2024/24_0245.htm

World Health Organization. (2024, August 7). The top 10 causes of death. World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

US News. (2024). Google search. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/happy
“Using AI To Track The Coronavirus – BBC Click.” YouTube, uploaded by BBC, 12 March 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8luhuPY8gwo.