Artificial Intelligence in Laboratory Medicine

Abstract

Artificial intelligence has found its way into virtually all human endeavours and the spectrum of engagement keeps enlarging. Art, finance, data analysis, automobile, cybersecurity, and healthcare have all benefitted from the enormous remodelling artificial intelligence has brought to those fields. Laboratory medicine is a branch of the medical practice involved in taking samples from the human body and examining them to determine patients’ diagnosis and aid in administering the appropriate treatment. Existing literature was reviewed to identified how well laboratory medicine has utilized artificial intelligence in its operations. Anatomical pathology, chemical pathology, haematology, and clinical microbiology specialties of laboratory medicine have embraced artificial intelligence, deploying several tools into almost all the phases of the total testing process. They have incorporated machine learning, deep learning, artificial neural network and several other tools into electronic medical records, screening, diagnosis, and data curation. This has led to a great improvement in the quality of work and turnaround time in most of the laboratories. Although there are challenges currently limiting the deployment of artificial intelligence in these specialties, there is a continual effort at circumventing them, and improving service delivery to the end users. It is expected that the expansion in the technological spectrum in all the phases of laboratory practice will continue to improve workflow and efficiency of laboratories in the provision of quality services to patients and clinicians