In the face of ever-rising healthcare costs, technology could offer a reprieve. Indeed, physicians across the country are interested in learning about the potential benefits of AI for themselves and their patients. A recent survey by the American Medical Association (AMA) found that 65% of physicians believe AI offers advantages, particularly when it comes to tools that reduce administrative burdens, such as documentation and prior authorization; and they believe that AI holds great promise in areas such as supporting diagnoses and workflows.
And yet, adoption rates of generative AI remain relatively low in healthcare, with only 38% of physicians surveyed saying they currently use AI in their practice. Robert Budman, MD, who is chief medical information officer with Nuance, said he expects that to change significantly in the years ahead, as more healthcare leaders experience AI’s ability to solve some of healthcare’s most demanding challenges and positively impact patient care. “Generative AI can help reduce cognitive and administrative burdens, saving precious time,” Dr. Budman said. “When used properly, the right technology can enhance the delivery of care, allowing physicians to focus more on the patient and the decisions that impact that patient.”
Dr. Budman notes that AI is already helping to accelerate advances in drug research and discovery, enhance clinical decisions and diagnostics, diminish administrative burdens and improve patient-doctor communications. Here are a few of the many ways AI tools are helping to transform healthcare and how they can benefit physicians and patients along the way..
- It can document patient encounters and integrate information into the EHR. Today, for every hour a physician spends with a patient, they spend two hours completing administrative work, according to the American Medical Association. Generative AI can help relieve that burden by making it easier to document care. Ambient Clinical Intelligence (ACI) automatically transcribes conversations between a clinician and a patient and integrates the complete patient story into the electronic medical record. Because the technology is operated from a phone or tablet, it enables the clinician to have candid conversations with patients face-to-face, without the need to type notes into a computer.
- It can offer insights into diagnostics and imaging. Because technology can digest and learn from reams of data, research has shown that generative AI can improve the accuracy and efficiency of analyzing medical images in areas such as radiology, pathology, cardiology and beyond. In addition, ACI can assist physicians in patient diagnoses. By recording conversations with patients and documenting details that might have otherwise been overlooked, this generative AI tool integrates extensive data into the patient’s EHR. Today, and in the future, the complete patient story is available to potentially assist physicians in diagnosis and treatment.
- It can enhance clinical decision-making. Electronic health records hold a trove of information about patients. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are well suited to examine that data and predict outcomes based on it, which could assist a clinician in making treatment recommendations. According to the American Hospital Association, analysis by AI outperforms the Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS), which is a traditional tool used by hospitals to calculate a patient’s risk for declining health.
- It may help accelerate drug discovery and development. On average, it can take 10 to 15 years to develop a new medicine, at a cost of around $2.6 billion, according to Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Because AI can be used to automate processes, consolidate steps and predict outcomes, it holds great potential to hasten the speed of the discovery and development of new medicines.
Generative AI can be used to assist in the work that humans do, but at a faster speed and a lower cost. That, in turn, helps address some of the challenges that hospital systems everywhere are facing, including physician burnout, health worker shortages, administrative burdens, rising costs and more, all while assuring better accuracy and many enhanced outcomes in healthcare.
And beyond those benefits, Dr. Budman says he’s seeing hospitals use AI as a workplace perk: it resonates so deeply with clinicians that it doubles as a retention and recruitment tool, he says. “After physicians use generative AI in their work, they will bond to it,” Dr. Budman said. “Whether it’s for documentation or diagnosis, they won’t want to go back to the pre-AI processes, in fact, they will resist reverting to prior methodologies.”
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Originally Published On: Healthcare Dive
Photo courtesy of: Getty Images
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