AI is the future of healthcare. It has the ability to impact efficiency, reduce healthcare costs and drive economic growth, especially in developing countries. In a recent episode of “A Shot in the Arm Podcast,” host Ben Plumley discussed the future of innovation and equity in global healthcare with Eyal Zimlichman, MD, Chief Transformation Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at Sheba Medical Center and the Director and Founder of ARC Innovation, an incubator for startups and internal solutions.
When thinking about making changes in healthcare, innovation is often what comes to mind. And yes, innovation matters. It’s the fun, exciting part of change. But Dr. Zimlichman points out that change is difficult — especially in healthcare where professionals are taught (and learn) by imitating others.
It’s for this reason he says that innovation alone isn’t enough. “Innovation again is we’ll be coming up with the right solutions and we’ll talk about AI and what that promises to healthcare, but the transformation is really implementing that on a massive scale,” he explained.
So where do healthcare leaders start? According to Dr. Zimlichman, we have to ask the question: “How do we change the equation from healthcare being a cost — a burden on society in many ways — to healthcare also being an economic engine of growth that drives the economy, that drives welfare, that drives communities?”
Once the idea (or innovation) is there, a first step is ensuring there’s enthusiasm and buy-in from the clinicians who will be using the innovation. It’s critical to success.
“We see hospitals and other health systems where providers provide healthcare as the center where innovation is required. This is where we need to be active,” Dr. Zimlichman explained. “We need to turn provider organizations…into factories of innovation.”
Dr. Zimlichman points to the success of Sheba Medical Center as an example, driving innovation and commercialization of ARC Innovation-supported solutions in just a limited number of years. The result: 20 companies every year leaving Sheba Medical Center to change healthcare globally.
“The reason we’re able to do this is through driving innovation that comes from clinicians. Clinicians know the needs the best. They understand the pain points. They are the production floors of healthcare,” he said. “And when I say clinicians — it’s not just doctors — it’s nurses, it’s all allied health professions. We have physiotherapists, we have psychologists, we have social workers.”
It’s these professionals that Dr. Zimlichman says identify the problem. They then use a facilitated process to develop a solution, which is then scaled to products and commercialized as companies. “These companies are the right platform that would move forward across countries, across healthcare systems, to really bring this huge impact globally,” he said.
One of the first companies/innovations that originated from Sheba Medical Center and ARC Innovation was Aidoc.
This product started in the Emergency Department (ED) in 2017. The idea: Use AI to identify life-threatening conditions quickly after a scan, and alert the staff or radiologist to the potential finding. It started with a stroke triage algorithm (mostly related to hemorrhagic bleeds), and then cascaded into the care needed to save patients’ lives.
“In a study published last year, we demonstrated that this resulted in a 30% reduction in mortality among patients with intracranial hemorrhage,1” said Dr. Zimlichman. “We then looked within Sheba [to see] the impact, and found that this saved about 50 lives a year. Now, this is the interesting part: This technology has been implemented in 1,500 hospitals around the world. Multiply 50 by 1,500, and you’ll get the number of lives that an image-based algorithm was able to save.”
Noting this success, Dr. Zimlichman shared that this is how they’re looking at solutions now. Start with the pain point from the clinician’s perspective and understand what the patients are facing, find the right solution (many times AI would come into play here), and then prove that it works, gather evidence and scale it globally.
So, how is this received by clinicians? “What we discovered is that radiologists aren’t interested in a solution like this to come in as a decision support tool because that is a threat to doctors, just like it would be to any profession,” he said. “So, we said to the doctors, ‘the AI will only prioritize it for you to read,’ and the doctors said, ‘we’re completely fine with that.’”
The doctors acknowledged that they couldn’t read the scans in milliseconds, and that AI’s assistance in prioritizing scans could be beneficial.
As healthcare evolves and relies more on AI, Dr. Zimlichman shared what he’s most excited about for the future.
“Like in the Aidoc example, we need AI to help us make better decisions as clinicians but also as healthcare managers,” he said. “What we’ve seen over the last two years are the generative AI (gen AI) solutions and they of course are a perfect match for healthcare because the gen AI is about language, right? We call them large language modules. Healthcare is about language”
He explained that the language of healthcare is in the interactions between providers and patients. “So, large language modules and gen AI are specifically positioned to completely transform healthcare on many, many levels.”
With so much to look forward to, AI is most definitely guiding healthcare to a brighter future.
Interested in learning more?
Watch the full podcast.
Citation
1. Kotovich, Dmitry, et al. “The Impact on Clinical Outcomes After 1 Year of Implementation of an Artificial Intelligence Solution for the Detection of Intracranial Hemorrhage.” International Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 16, no. 50, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12245-023-00523-y.
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