November 7, 2024

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AI could be a game changer, but healthcare needs to be ‘exceedingly careful’

AI could be a game changer, but healthcare needs to be ‘exceedingly careful’

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LAS VEGAS — When the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System was testing an artificial intelligence-backed tool that drafts responses to messages, a patient misspelled the name of a medication, Karl Kochendorfer, chief health information officer, recalled during a panel at the HLTH conference last week.

The mistake led the AI to give side effects for a drug the patient wasn’t using when a nurse forgot to double-check the response.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a huge issue — they just needed to call the patient or send another message to issue a correction, he said. But it could have had serious implications for the tool.

“It almost killed the pilot. […] And it happened on day one,” he said.

As healthcare grapples with how to safely implement AI, investors and health systems are first seeing promise adopting tools that automate administrative and back-office work, which could make a dent in provider burnout and pose fewer risks to patient care, experts said at the HLTH conference.

But the pressure is on to adopt the tech. Proponents argue AI could help solve healthcare’s significant workforce challenges: The nation faces a shortage of more than 100,000 critical healthcare workers in 2028, as the overall population ages and needs more care, according to a report by consultancy Mercer.

While AI could be transformative, the sector has to move with caution as it implements emerging tools, experts say. The stakes are high, as policymakers and experts have raised concerns about accuracy, bias and security. 

Implementing AI in healthcare is complex, a lesson the industry should take from some predictive tools that were previously deployed, said Rohan Ramakrishna, co-founder and chief medical officer at health information app Roon, during a panel at HLTH.

“I think one of the things we’ve learned is that you have to be exceedingly careful applying AI solutions in healthcare settings,” he said.

How AI could help a ‘simple mismatch between supply and demand’

AI could help alleviate one of the biggest problems in healthcare: a growing number of older patients with more complex, chronic conditions and fewer providers who can help them, Daniel Yang, vice president of AI and emerging technologies at Kaiser Permanente, said during a panel discussion. 

As older Americans need more care, millennials, the largest generation in the U.S., want a more on-demand consumer experience, he added. But that will be difficult to achieve with supply constraints. It takes years to train a new doctor, and fewer physicians means more burnout, care delays and higher costs.

“It’s not even about AI, it’s really about what I think ails healthcare in general,” Yang said. “What we’re seeing is a simple mismatch between supply and demand.”

AI could augment clinicians’ workflows, potentially helping them offer better care. Yang said an algorithm developed by researchers at the Permanente Medical Group helps save 500 lives each year by flagging patients who were at risk of clinical decompensation, or when their condition worsens.


“It’s better for me because it does save you time. But at the end of the day, it’s better for the patient because they feel like they’re being heard. It truly has been a transformative experience for me.”

Christopher Wixon

Vascular surgeon at the Savannah Vascular Institute


The technology could also be a way to lessen burnout and improve retention among clinicians by lessening the time they spend on administrative work such as note-taking. Providers have long reported they spend hours on work in their electronic records, often to the detriment of patient care. 

Christopher Wixon, a vascular surgeon at the Savannah Vascular Institute, said he was close to leaving medicine as the industry shifted to electronic health records. Collecting information while trying to listen to patients was a challenge, and it was easy to miss out on non-verbal cues when he had to focus on a laptop screen.

But ambient documentation, typically where an AI tool records conversations between clinicians and patients and then drafts a note, has changed the game, he said. 

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