The world of healthcare is now changing AI, enabling new healthcare providers to make decisions that are more accurate, faster, and data-driven than previous generations. The use of artificial intelligence is wide - from reducing the administrative burden on health professionals to improving monitoring and treatment of fertility.

Another area of medicine and diagnostics where AI has a revolutionary impact is mental health - one of the biggest health and social problems we have to deal with.

The global cost of treating and caring for Alzheimer's patients alone is $ 1 trillion more than $ 1 trillion a year, underscoring the need for new technology to address this important issue. According to WSO. every sixth world population has a neurocognitive disorder. As many as 60% of diseases of the nervous system remain undiagnosed, up to 90% in developing countries.

Misdiagnosis is another challenge that, according to the National Institute of Social Services, affects about 20% of patients with multiple sclerosis, 20% of patients with Alzheimer's disease and 30% of patients with Parkinson's disease.

At ViewMind, we understand this challenge because we use artificial intelligence in digital biomarkers to predict patients suffering from mental health problems using data collected in a VR-style headset from eye movement patterns. The data is then analyzed by artificial intelligence-driven algorithms that can identify hidden mental health problems.

The societal need for early diagnosis of mental health problems is growing, and new studies emphasize the importance of helping patients before their symptoms appear. Specifically, a new pioneering study published in The Lancet found that the number of adults with dementia worldwide is set to nearly triple to a staggering 153 million patients by 2050. This shows how strange it is that this problem persists, as early diagnosis is needed to help healthcare providers focus their efforts quickly on patients.

Until they are properly diagnosed, many of these patients do not receive the care and attention they need. If a patient begins to receive care only after they show symptoms, healthcare providers are facing a disease that can damage the patient's mental health for decades. Effective treatment must come before symptoms appear, allowing the patient to receive appropriate care, medication, and lifestyle advice. This makes early diagnosis - driven by new technology - even more important.

In general medicine, positive steps are taken when early diagnosis is established and widely available, which supports innovation and treatments aimed at the early stage of intervention before symptoms appear. Examples are colonoscopy, cervical screening and diabetes screening.

If traditional methods of diagnosing cognition are really effective and applicable, this problem is not so serious. Unfortunately, this is not the case because traditional methods are often invasive and associated with a degree of risk.

This is the case for lumbar cerebrospinal fluid punctures, which involve taking a sample of cerebrospinal fluid in the lower back or performing a PET scan to detect amyloid beta or Tau ball deposits. In addition to the risks associated with procedures such as these, tests are expensive and often require huge fees for each patient examination.

This has implications for the whole spectrum of healthcare providers and these studies are speculatively inaccessible.

Relying solely on traditional tests is clearly not the best practice. Diagnosis must be available, sensitive and affordable to help us prepare for the coming dementia epidemic, for example. Our goal at ViewMind is that in the future, we will be able to test millions of people each year in clinical and non-clinical facilities, such as general practitioners or opticians, as part of standard health assessments, as well as in hospital neurology departments. 

Healthcare professionals can use ViewMind technology to perform a 15-minute test with a VR headset ViewMind recently signed a partnership with HP in which ViewMind tests were performed only on the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept VR Headset.

Approximately 100,000 data points were collected by measuring the patient's eye movements during a set of diagnostic exercises. The data were then analyzed by AI to correlate the data of a person with various neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD and multiple sclerosis, which provided an accurate diagnosis and, depending on the test, before clinical symptoms.

The validity of ViewMind technology has been demonstrated in many studies, including a four-year longitudinal study in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study predicted with 97% accuracy which patients would develop Alzheimer's syndrome and highlighted how this technology affects. ViewMind technology is accurate enough to help pharmaceutical companies also test the effect of certain drugs and dose levels on patient identification and motor function, an area with high growth potential.

Previous studies like this are very difficult to do, they are seen for months or even years. ViewMind technology speeds up the entire inspection process. The technology could enable testing of new drugs in a controlled environment, the creation of individual data to study the impact of drugs on specific patients, and paving the way for personalized treatment.

Finally, early diagnosis and the discovery of new treatments is the difference in combating the growth of mental health disorders. If patient diagnosis technology is widely available before they develop symptoms, many people will receive treatment for 10-20 years before the symptoms become irreversible.

This problem is all the more important because many of the newer drugs that are being developed today are most effective in combating early-stage diseases. Previous research has also found that delaying the onset of Alzheimer's disease by five years through medical intervention can reduce the prevalence of clinical symptoms by 50% in 50 years.

All this underlines the benefits of early diagnosis. Not only can you slow down and reduce the impact of mental illness, but early diagnosis also gets the patient under control. It can inform them to positively influence their own condition through lifestyle changes and treatment.

We can consider aging to be a normal part of life, but that does not mean that people are guaranteed to develop Alzheimer's disease. Because patients who are more likely to develop Alzheimer's will change their lifestyle at an early stage, it can provide a better world - we don't have to die with diagnostic technology at our fingertips.

Instead, we must be ambitious in the fight against mental disorders. The scale of the problem only requires us to address this attitude, because we can no longer rely on old ways of thinking to overcome this problem.

The adoption of new technology accompanies this approach, because often it is this technological innovation that can enable us to achieve the bold goals we have set. The use of artificial intelligence to diagnose patients with Alzheimer's disease and dementia is clearly an important part of this story, but it is only one part.

For example, more and more technological innovations may also enter the treatment phase. If we already know the power and effectiveness that AI can bring, these possibilities are inconceivable for future generations, pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible in patient care.