Telehealth and patient engagement software are a part of healthcare. Now Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also setting foot into healthcare to facilitate medical imaging.

It's projected that hospitals will be spending $2 billion a year on Artificial Intelligence for medical imaging by the year 2023. This was revealed in a new report from Signify Research.

The AI medical imaging category at Signify includes software for decision support, automated detection, quantification, diagnosis and machine learning.

Signify Research analyst Simon Harris said that the interest of the radiologist community in AI has increased since past 12 to 18 months. Discussions have shifted from AI being a threat to how AI can assist radiologists.

AI is poised to transform the diagnostic imaging industry as it will increase productivity and accuracy according to Signify. This will enable personalized treatment planning and it will help radiology departments take care of larger volumes of imaging. It’s extremely useful as many countries have a shortage of radiologists.

Harris also said that clinical applications where AI was used have shown improvements in outcomes and ROI for hospitals. Software to detect and diagnose stroke and analysis tools to measure blood flow in non-invasive coronary exams are also emerging.