An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expert, Mr Oluwafemi Osho, on Thursday, says Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has the capacity to aid precision in medicine and healthcare.
Osho, a Lecturer in Cyber Security Science, Federal University of Technology, Minna, made this known in Abuja.
The don was reacting to a recent report by Micron Technology, a U.S-based firm, which claimed that smart toilets that could scan poop using AI had been developed, thereby saving an individual a trip to the doctor.
Precision Medicine/healthcare (PM) is a medical model that proposes the customisation of healthcare, with medical decisions, treatments, practices, or products being tailored to the individual patient.
Osho said that “because this technology is new, I don’t doubt the possibility of such technology, it is 100 per cent sure that such can happen.
“With AI, a lot of things are possible today but you won’t just completely rule out the application of hardware to that technology because it is a combination.”
The expert, however, believed that such AI toilets would have inbuilt censors that analyse human sample, just like equipment that can analyse sweat to know sugar level, etc.
According to him, until the manufacturers of such toilet release more data on its functionality, it may not be possible to say much about the technology.
Reacting to the readiness of Nigeria in adopting AI for development, Osho said that consumers of such technology were ready but the readiness was lacking in terms of playing roles of expertise.
He regretted that there were few or no tertiary institutions in the country that offered careers in AI, saying this should have served as platform to develop that area of technology.
“When you say we are ready for the contribution of AI development from the consumers’ perspective, yes we are ready to adopt technology that use AI in production.
“However, when it comes to playing a major role in AI development, we are not ready because we lack the expertise. It is something that should start from the basics.
“In tertiary institutions across the country, you hardly see any institution offering AI as a career, the best you can see is probably few courses,” Osho said.
He added that there were few organisations and ICT start-ups taking AI seriously but they focused more on using AI for business, data analysis, data science to generate income.
Osho said that political will was needed to develop the technology sector to stimulate professionals, experts to deploy the application of AI in engineering, product development and hardware tools that use such technology.