AI, robots, and healthcare: What does the future hold?

Sitting in his Sydney lab, Dr Jordan Nguyen is joined by his newest friend, Koobo the robot.
 
Right now, a conversation with Koobo is similar to speaking to a five-year-old, but one day, Dr Nguyen hopes this artificial intelligence (AI) could be the key to addressing Australia’s growing loneliness epidemic.
 
A biological engineer and inventor, Dr Nguyen aims to meld healthcare and technology in a bid to improve patient outcomes and advance care options.
 
And in November, he will give a keynote address at the GP24 conference in Perth which he plans to use to take GPs through ‘a bunch of adventures’ about what is happening in the world of AI and how it can help the profession.
 
‘How we improve our health systems is through understanding that big data we collect, and once we start to gain insights into that, we can help with our patient outcomes,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘It’s always keeping that humanity first, and I think that’s the important thing.
 
‘It’s always been about understanding what drove people, what drove the innovators and the inventors, what sort of inspirations are out there, and how could we look towards a more positive future for humanity.’
 
Fittingly for Dr Nguyen, the theme of this year’s GP24 is ‘reimagining healthcare’ and will explore how innovation, technology and new research can shape the way GPs care for their communities.
 
Though his business Psykinetic, he has already created a mind-controlled wheelchair, several virtual and augmented reality applications, and devices that can control appliances or drive cars using electrical signals created from eye movements.
 
Now, Dr Nguyen hopes his new robot, Koobo, can one day work as a companion to patients, especially those in aged care.
 
‘With the idea of companion robots, this opens up many different forms of applications in AI, from understanding how a person is feeling, through to other types of analytics that you can utilise these types of AI systems for, like predictive analytics and health,’ he said.
 
‘The first thing that we wanted to do was to look at how we could help decrease the technological divide.
 
‘What we started to realise is that the people who were being left behind were often the ones who could benefit the most from these technological advancements, so that’s what we wanted to make sure wasn’t happening.’
 
Dr Nguyen will join other keynote speakers Dr Jenny Brockis, Dr John Buckley, Professor Helen Milroy, and Dr Amandeep Hansra, who will discuss topics ranging from technology to medical education, cultural safety, and digital health.

And with two brothers working as GPs, he said it has given him a crucial insight into the profession, its needs and the lives of busy doctors.
 
‘From talking to a range of GPs that I know, and with my own brothers, they’re so busy day-to-day that often it can be very hard to even engage with technology,’ he said.
 
‘It’s about finding the technologies that you want to engage with or that might be of interest to you individually, as a GP.
 
‘You’ve got electronic health records, and ability to harness data and to gain insights from that data with artificial intelligences, which is pretty amazing, and that leads to predictive health.’
 
With less than two months left until the Perth conference, Dr Nguyen said it also acts as an opportunity for him to speak to GPs, to hear their ideas, and have them help shape the future of healthcare AI.
 
‘GPs connect with the people and they just understand people in a way that no one else gets to,’ he said.
 
‘To be able to bring the potential benefits of technology to the things that GPs do, and to give them that opportunity to engage with things that they might not have known really existed out there or didn’t know were advancing the way that they are, it’s a great opportunity.
 
‘I can’t wait to not only get there and speak to everyone, but to meet a lot of people and hear their feedback and get to know a bit more about what GPs want out of technology.’
 
GP24 will be held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre from 21–23 November, on Whadjuk Noongar Country. There are also optional pre-conference workshops on offer on 20 November.
 
Early bird registration will remain open until 30 September.
 
RACGP members can earn up to 29 CPD hours if they attend the full three-day conference, with an additional 20 hours CPD available through a range of optional inclusions, such as Reviewing Performance (RP) and Measuring Outcomes (MO) activities.
 
For more information, to register, or to access the conference’s program, visit the GP24 website.
 
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