Post written by Yuichi Mori, MD, PhD, from the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

We just published the first article in the world that investigates the possibility of reducing medical costs by using artificial intelligence (AI) during colonoscopy. This AI tool is designed to assist optical biopsy of diminutive colorectal polyps (<5 mm), with excellent accuracy. The high-performance optical biospy is expected to reduce a huge amount of polypectomy-related costs. According to our calculation, it is going to be a maximum of 85 million dollars in U.S. Medicare. It may be the prime time for health insurance bodies to look into the benefits of adopting AI in endoscopy!

Figure 3. Estimated gross annual reimbursement for colonoscopies under the diagnose-and-leave strategy supported by the artificial intelligence (AI) prediction and the resect-all-polyps strategy in Japan, England, Norway, and the United States. A percentage of the cost reduction by the use of AI in each country is also shown.

Read the full article online.

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