AI-Assisted Diagnostics for Rural and Underserved Communities:
Bridging Healthcare Gaps
Affiliations
1
Department of Computer Science, Westcliff University, Irvine, CA 92614, USA
2
Department of Information Security, ITMO University, Kronverkskiy Prospekt, 49, St Petersburg, Russia, 197101
3
Department of Psychology , St.Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201-4398, USA
4
Department of Nursing, Los Angeles City College, 855 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles California
Abstract
The delivery of quality health care in rural and other hard-to-reach areas in the United States is
still a problem due to poor infrastructural development, lack of enough health workers, and little
or no funds. These barriers lead to late diagnosis, worse health and a large disparity in health
care. This research aims to identify the process of developing and implementing cost-effective
diagnostic AI systems that are specific to identifying chronic and critical diseases such as
diabetes, skin cancer, and influenza in these areas. The tools applied are machine learning
algorithms, portable diagnosis devices, and cloud-based analytics. They showed high diagnostic
accuracy with sensitivity of up to 94% for diabetes diagnosis and 91% for skin cancer diagnosis.
Another important improvement was the cost efficiency, which was noted as the fact that the AIbased methods were significantly cheaper, on average 45% cheaper than conventional methods.
Moreover, the use of AI-supported tools enhanced early detection by a large margin, especially
in Appalachia; early diabetes identification rose from 40% in 2019 to 78% in 2023. Nevertheless,
some of the issues that were highlighted include restricted internet connection, legal restraints,
and first rejection from the medical fraternity. Solving these problems will require infrastructure
development, changes in the law, and trust in new technologies. This paper focuses on the role
of AI Diagnostics in filling gap...
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