The growing power of AI has sparked considerable enthusiasm as well as apprehension in many industries, and healthcare is no exception. With the potential to reshape healthcare delivery, AI holds the promise of offering more personalized, affordable, and efficient care.
AI in healthcare can serve as a supportive co-pilot, assisting with everyday tasks, reinforcing patient safety measures, and affording healthcare professionals more time to focus on critical aspects of patient care. Ensuring the responsible and ethical application of AI is imperative to establish and preserve trust among both those facilitating care and those receiving it.
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Health AI opportunities
In today’s ubiquitous AI landscape, the approach to AI should extend beyond mere technological integration. AI becomes a strategic partner in healthcare delivery – a force that amplifies collective abilities, bringing about substantial, positive change to elevate overall care quality. It’s crucial to emphasize that AI is not intended to replace healthcare professionals but is instead designed to enhance their capabilities.
AI will be an invaluable ally in advancing healthcare excellence, working with clinicians and not substituting their judgment and experience. Using real-time feeds from audio, video, and radar-based sensors, AI can help detect patient deterioration or emerging conditions, enabling early interventions and preventive measures that can significantly improve clinical outcomes.
In navigating the realm of AI in healthcare, we should focus on the most promising clinical applications, including:
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- Ambient clinical intelligence: Acoustic AI records and documents doctor-patient conversations, thereby reducing administrative burdens on healthcare staff. This streamlining of record-keeping empowers clinicians to concentrate on delivering personalized care, ultimately enhancing the overall patient experience.
- Continuous vitals trending: AI technologies enable contactless monitoring of patient vital signs through cameras, radar devices, and wearables. It continuously updates healthcare providers about a patient’s condition, facilitating timely interventions.
- Augmented observation: Using computer vision, AI can track patient activity within their room, discerning whether patients are in bed, sitting up, walking around, or in distress. Alerts can be promptly dispatched to nurses or virtual caregivers for immediate response.
- Clinical decision support: AI algorithms can analyze vast patient data sets in real-time, identifying pertinent information and trends. It plays a pivotal role in guiding decision-making by providing data-driven insights and predictive algorithms, potentially saving lives.
AI challenges to overcome
We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of how AI can benefit clinical processes, but there are a number of challenges that we must address before wide applicability.
One of the major challenges for healthcare providers lies in effectively harnessing AI as a tool that enhances clinical insight, rather than allowing it to become a distraction or a substitute for caregivers.
Another challenge is that AI needs to be carefully managed in the healthcare context to ensure fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability. AI systems can make unfair and inaccurate recommendations if they are trained on biased data. Presently, the lack of transparency about AI algorithms makes it difficult to identify and address potential biases.
To promote transparency and accountability in the development and use of AI in healthcare, AI developers should be prepared to disclose their algorithms and data sets and validate the algorithms against real-world data to help ensure AI systems are accurate and reliable. This will go a long way in building trust.
Finally, it is important to provide clinical end-users with the ability to override the recommendations of AI-powered healthcare systems. This will help to ensure that providers have ultimate control over their patients’ care.
As our industry takes this next brave step forward with clinical AI, it’s imperative to ensure that implementations align with our shared ultimate goal: delivering the best care possible and improving patient outcomes.
Embracing the possibilities that AI unlocks, our commitment to seamlessly integrating AI into healthcare workflows reflects our belief that technology should melt into the background, empowering human caregivers to focus on delivering compassionate patient care.
Photo: zhuweiyi49, Getty Images
Kedar Ganta is Caregility's Chief Product and Engineering Officer. Mr. Ganta oversees the entire product and engineering portfolio for Caregility, managing product lifecycle and strategy, shaping technical vision, and defining product roadmaps.
