Malta has ‘perfect conditions’ to introduce AI technologies to healthcare – EBO.ai CEO Gege Gatt

EBO.ai CEO Gege Gatt has stated that Malta has the “perfect conditions” to give artificial intelligence (AI) and innovative technologies more prominence in the healthcare sector.

This came after the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) on Thursday (today) revealed that the number of people waiting to start routine hospital treatment in England is at a record high, with strikes prompting around 778,000 hospital appointments being rescheduled.

Reacting to this, Dr Gatt, an expert in implementing AI business solutions, remarked that traditional healthcare models that fail to scale efficiently need to be changed. He remarked that as a result, the leveraging of advanced AI and innovative technology to enhance patient care “is no longer optional”.

MaltaCEOs.mt reached out to him to find out how the integration of such technologies into healthcare can be so impactful, to which he replied that “few states in Europe” can maintain an “efficient healthcare system”.

“Processes that come from the 1980s about how we engage with clients are no longer applicable to an era where you have a large amount of citizens that expect instant gratification,” he said.

However, he explained that “most healthcare institutions” still adopt patient engagement methods that are “archaic”, evident through the results witnessed in the UK by the NHS.

Dr Gatt acknowledged that “technology can never replace human capabilities”, yet it can “augment them”.

When asked whether there is as an urgent need to apply AI and advanced technologies to the local healthcare system, he noted that Malta has the opportunity to see “how to blend AI with other areas and how to make it more effective”, and as a result, “optimising our costs”.

“I think we can use technology to make healthcare more accessible and we can also use it to meet demand. Hospitals that don’t have the capacity to meet the new requirements, can do so through this,” he added.

Dr Gatt reaffirmed that Malta does not only need to introduce these technologies, but it also has the “perfect conditions” to do so.

“This is particularly the case because we are small, and so technology happens very rapidly as the adoption by citizens is easier,” he explained.

Another factor he pointed towards is that Malta is “blessed with a digitally mature audience”, an element he attributed to the past 30 years of governance which have focused on technology, enabling the population to have a level of digital literacy “that you don’t find in other countries”.

“We obviously have a need, as what’s being witnessed in the UK isn’t unique, and we’ve seen something similar in Malta,” he remarked.

Over recent years, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals have opted to or threatened to take industrial action on repeated occasions, prompting long waiting times and rescheduled appointments in hospitals.

Dr Gatt noted that technology can validate waiting lists and prioritise certain people, as “maximum attention has to be given to those who have a clinical background”.

“We can use technology to make healthcare more efficient, and we have the optimal conditions to introduce these types of systems,” he concluded.

Dr Gatt is Co-Founder and CEO of EBO.ai, a customer engagement automation company which helps enterprises improve customer engagement through AI technology, big data, and machine learning. The company states that it is “changing the way businesses innovate and manage the way they engage with their customers”.