Placing AI At The Heart Of Healthcare

Think about your typical healthcare visit. You want answers. You want to feel seen and heard. Your provider wants this too. And from this year on, technology — such as artificial intelligence (AI) — will be the key to meeting the needs of patients and practitioners.

AI can streamline workflows for a better patient experience and work-life balance for providers. AI can give patients more face-to-face interaction with their provider in the exam room that ensures their questions and concerns are heard. AI’s role in healthcare is to give back time while still ensuring that the day-to-day tasks, like scheduling, note-taking, record sharing, and billing are efficiently completed. It is not just about trying out the newest tech; it’s about bringing the heart back to healthcare and putting people first.

In healthcare, active listening is essential

Poor communication is the most challenging part of the healthcare experience, according to 83% of patients surveyed. And this is not surprising. Patients receive communication from several sources: calls from the front desk with an appointment reminder, an online intake form to fill out, conversations with a provider during an appointment, and a paper billing statement either from the office or sent in the mail.

Of these, the most important area of communication is in the exam room. That’s where the patient needs to be seen and heard as a human first, and a progress note to update, second.

Providers can also struggle against outside forces when communicating with patients. They have a never- ending to-do list in addition to appointments — like filling out patient progress notes, submitting prescription orders or entering codes for billing. This limits their time with patients and increases physician burnout (which doubled between 2019 and 2021). This mentally challenging and time- consuming workflow creates yet another barrier to human-centric healthcare.

That is where AI comes in. AI has the power to automate and streamline these communication channels for a more seamless patient experience and better work-life balance for providers.

AI is a solution that benefits providers and patients.

One of the most pressing topics impacting healthcare conversations today is physician burnout. It is found that providers spend 5 hours a day performing administrative tasks, including direct and indirect care and mundane tasks requiring their attention. AI can help automate administrative tasks, allowing providers to focus on the critical aspects of their role – taking care of patients. For example, using AI prediction models, like the healow AI-powered no-show prediction model, staff can identify patients who are highly likely to miss or skip an appointment, prompting reminders or opening the slot to someone who may need one last minute. This allows providers to spend less time worrying about keeping a full schedule and makes it easier for patients to get the care they need when they need it.

In the exam room, AI helps providers prepare for appointments by retrieving and organizing records so they can be caregivers first and administrators second. Solutions like PRISMA, the healthcare industry’s first health information search engine, use AI to help formulate care plans based on the most relevant patient information while still providing the option to see greater patient detail when needed.

AI can even remove the need for notetaking during an appointment. With ambient listening, providers can record the appointment and review a conversation draft summary. The summary easily integrates into the patient’s progress note and recommends the next steps. This removes the device barrier, freeing the provider to spend more ‘stethoscope time’ with patients, meaning additional time for the physical examination with the additional time-savings and reduced administrative workload. AI also removes language barriers by recognizing and summarizing natural conversations between providers and patients, in a multilingual setting, into draft SOAP notes. Sunoh.ai for example, is an AI medical scribe trusted by over 50,000 providers and saves providers up to two hours a day on clinical documentation. It is the first scribe to provide multimodal notes, and operates for several different specialties like dermatology and dental.

While AI solutions are revolutionizing the pre-appointment and exam room experience, there’s also an opportunity to streamline document sharing and billing. It may be surprising, but faxes aren’t going away in healthcare. And with the fast-paced nature of the industry, faxes can sometimes sit on the machine for hours, delaying patient results. However, AI, like Image AI from eClinicalWorks, can analyze a scanned fax, match it to the appropriate patient, and promptly share documents — such as lab results and consult requests — with the appropriate medical professionals. This expedites record sharing and reduces human error and clicks. AI can also help streamline coding, which is the backbone of healthcare billing, saving staff time and keeping practices running smoothly.

AI reimagines the future of healthcare.

Now imagine a new healthcare experience — one where you quickly booked your appointment online and synced it with your calendar. You were alerted with an automated text reminder and a link to check in for your appointment. At the office, you gave your name to the front desk and didn’t have to fill out pages of paperwork. You had time to decompress from the drive to the office and relax before seeing the doctor.

Before your appointment, your provider used AI to review your medical history and the reason for your visit. Once in the exam room, they ask for your permission to record the conversation for transcription and do not touch their laptop again. You can talk while looking directly into the provider’s eyes.

Without the frantic sound of clacking keys, you can think clearly and give the doctor a clear timeline of your health and what you need. The provider asks quality follow-up questions because they actively listen to your concerns.

You leave with a clear summary of the next steps, an automatically scheduled follow-up appointment, and a digital billing statement in your inbox. The provider ends your appointment with a summary of your conversation, organized with the next steps for their review. With a simple click, they add it to your patient progress note and can transition to giving their full attention to their next patient.

AI is actively used in other areas of our lives, like personalized content recommendations and digital assistants. But there is just as much opportunity — if not more — for automation and AI to recenter healthcare on what matters most: people.