AI in Clinical Laboratory

Ayame Eto

Jan 23 2025

AI in Clinical Laboratory

Have you ever heard of Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, is a magnificent tool. AI is used all around the world for cooking, education, social media, transportation, finance, and many other aspects of our lives. Recently, AI is also used in healthcare like diagnosis for illnesses, treatment, and cure of disease, injury, or illnesses. AI has helped more than 250,000 people each year since the 1970s. AI helps people in hospitals, clinics, and many medical centers, but it also helps people at clinical laboratories. Clinical laboratories are healthcare facilities that provide a wide range of laboratory strategies that help the clinicians diagnose and manage their patients by mainly examining blood, body fluid, tissue, and cells.

In my insightful interview with Ms. Hirano, an expert in AI in clinical laboratories, I gained a lot of new information that many people might not know. Notably, I learned that AI has just begun to be used in clinical laboratories and is still in its infancy. Ms. Hirano explains that “Depending on the facility, a machine determines whether the patient’s sample has the correct volume,” “and if the sample has the correct data, the machine sends it to a testing center.” There are some facilities that use AI for researching and diagnosing patients, while others don’t.

AI is not only used in medical fields for measuring data, but also used to sample blood. “These days, AI even collects blood for data. This is because if we humans do the blood sampling, we might make mistakes. However, if the AI and machines do the blood sampling, they can detect where the blood vessels are and they can take the blood easily.” Ms. Hirano said “Also, if AI collects a variety of information, a variety of new technologies may be created”. Additionally, if AI does most of the testing process, the results will come in faster. Therefore, AI has many positive impacts in clinical laboratories. Yet, the adoption of AI in clinical laboratories entails negative impacts as well. For example, if we use more AI in health checks, there is a high chance of medical mistakes increasing due to errors, biases, or missing information in the data that the AI couldn’t collect. Ms. Hirano also thinks that in the future, there is a high possibility of AI starting to do neuro testing, which is a test looking at your brain signs, and cardio testing, which is listening to your heartbeat. At first glance, you may think that this is purely beneficial. However, it can adversely increase the amount of medical mistakes. “There are many people who rely on AI to do all the work without using their brain,” Ms. Hirano explained. “If the person who is giving us the data doesn’t know how they got the data because they use AI and didn’t do the work,” “everything is going to become a black box. If we cannot understand the data too, we cannot inform the others”.

Ms. Hirano also acknowledges the harmful impact of AI technology in clinical laboratories in the long-term. Specifically, she takes into account that AI might eliminate job opportunities for humans and takes over a lot of medical technologist’s work.

AI is still a technology that has not been fully implemented. Yet, AI is starting to help clinical laboratories in companies like Nikkei Asia and NVIDIA Blog. There are also researchers who are trying to develop AI and increase its use in clinical laboratories. I agree with Ms. Hirano, and I believe that AI has some positive features and some negative features. I reckon this, because, according to ScienceDirect, AI can cause a lack of data diversity and understanding, poor security, regulation, accreditation, and bias in the data. In the future, I hope that AI will be more developed and both AI and medical laboratory technicians will have equal amounts of work.