The hype around AI in healthcare is undeniable. It’s becoming a must-discuss topic at tradeshows. The sophistication of AI discussions are well beyond questioning its utility and have evolved into questions surrounding AI adoption and governance structures.
With countless AI vendors vying for the attention of hospital leaders all over the world, it begs the question: What’s the best way to approach this tsunami of AI hype? What sort of operational benefits should I look to achieve from AI? How can my health system adopt AI with interoperability and data interoperability at top of mind?
These are some of the questions discussed and answered in the CIO podcast, where Bill Hudson, Aidoc’s AI Executive Strategist and former health system CIO, weighed in on a handful of pressing AI conversations.
There’s no doubt that the workforce shortage in healthcare is pronounced, especially in North America, causing impediments to optimal care delivery. While AI is not an end all be all solution to this challenge, AI can give some time back to a fatigued workforce, one of which is still reporting pre-pandemic levels of burnout.
“We’re never going to have more nurses than we have now. We’re never going to have more doctors than we have now,” says Hudson. “We need to be able to give those clinicians more tools to be efficient. To me, that’s what this is about, is helping organizations give that time back to nurses, give that time back to doctors so they can be doctors.”
While the digital age of healthcare has ushered in countless benefits to care providers and patients alike, the promise of digitizing patient records, for example, have come with their own burdens. “We’re way better than we were 20 years ago,” Hudson points out. “But that’s come at a cost. We’ve put the burden of technology on the backs of every nurse and doctor that practices medicine in our country, to the point that nurses feel like stenographers as much as anything.” While that has undoubtedly brought us to a time of far greater patient outcomes and operational efficiencies, the promise of AI is to be that augmentative function to help physicians and nurses “be in the moment” and listen to patients. This is the crux of AI’s role in healthcare: not to replace physicians, but to augment them.
Focus on the problem you’re trying to solve. Rather than discussing the technology and the product offering, look at the problems you are seeking to solve as a health system. “Every system in this country is under pressure, but is focused on five or six key strategies,” Hudson says. “You have to ask yourself, is it a problem worth solving? Are you going to have measurable improvements and outcomes? Is it going to drive better patient care and does it align to the organizational mission?” Those are the things that should get attention. First, Hudson advises to identify the problems they aim to solve and find the technology that is going to help you solve them.
More insights can be found in the full podcast episode
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