By Mrunalini Parvataneni on September 29, 2021
There is so much being written about the potential for AI to transform healthcare. The use of AI-powered tech in healthcare is increasing. A scroll of my linked in feed gives the impression that there is an exponential increase however, in reality, healthcare is still very much people dependent and there is resistance to accepting new technologies.
In this series, I will discuss how AI has the potential to improve lives – those of healthcare providers as well as patients.
Healthcare is the business of caring for humans when they are most vulnerable. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers all chose to enter healthcare for the humanity aspects of helping others. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard anyone say that they chose healthcare for the cool technology. This human-human interaction has been disrupted by technology and like any disruption, it’s messy and uncomfortable initially. Any provider who lived through the transition from paper charts to electronic medical records can attest to this, likely with some traumatic memories.
The challenge is to get past this chaotic stage and really incorporate technology in our workflow so that we can start to benefit and refocus. Human-human interaction cannot be replaced but AI-powered technology can enhance it and make our clinical days more fun again.
The WHO predicts that there will be a projected shortfall of 9.9 million physicians, nurses and midwives globally by 2030. In addition to training more healthcare professionals, it is essential that we retain them by ensuring that they spend their time doing what they enjoy – caring for patients. The mundane, repetitive tasks of documentation for reimbursement, medico-legal and regulatory reasons add up to 10-20 hours by the end of the week. Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered technologies such as voice recognition for transcription and coding have the potential to help. Imagine an in-office that captures the patient-doctor conversation and transcribes it in a useful way to populate the medical record so that you don’t have to type it out. It captures the text in your style and documents exactly what was discussed. No more trying to remember all the details that were discussed to enter into the chart at the end of the day. Sounds too easy? Maybe, but with our help, the technology will get better. Machine Learning which is a core part of these technologies is just that, learning. Through learning, machines will improve. Healthcare providers have an important role in this process. Without our willingness to try these technologies and give feedback for iterating and improving, they cannot improve. Who better to do this than us, the users and the people who have the most to benefit from them working well? It won’t be easy, and it will take time, but without this effort, we cannot get to the other side, the side where this technology is truly helpful for us.
