Artificial Intelligence in Health Care

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the landscape of health care. In an industry that is always looking for new ways to overcome inefficiency and human error, the integration of AI in the medical field means an increase in efficiency and accuracy, creating the opportunity for providers to better serve patients and improve outcomes.

“Generative AI introduces a digital assembly line, automating repetitive tasks and enabling professionals to focus on their true expertise,” says Josh Spence, chief information officer at Alpha Innovations.

The dynamic capabilities of AI have a revolutionary impact on streamlining tasks and productivity.

“By leveraging AI-powered technologies, health care providers can optimize clinical workflows, personalize patient care and streamline IT processes,” says Rob Bannister, health care account manager at Juniper Networks. “From predictive analytics for early disease detection to virtual health assistants that improve accessibility, AI’s impact on health care will be something all organizations’ leaders must consider. It empowers providers to deliver proactive, personalized care, improve treatment outcomes and ultimately elevate the overall patient and user experiences.”

AI can play a role in most aspects of medicine and can be split into two main categories: clinical and administrative support.

On the clinical side, according to the President of SMB Health Consulting, Steven Berkowitz, M.D., AI can support caregivers in making decisions such as helping clinicians make earlier diagnoses. It can also help with documentation processes, such as accelerating physician notes and patient messages. In addition, AI can help provide individualized patient care and contribute to achieving health equity.

“We have nurse practitioners seeing patients for eight- or 10-hour days, and because of how burdensome the documentation piece of their job is, they spend another eight hours in the evening or following day for that documentation,” says Justyn Cox, executive director of the West Virginia Health Care Authority (WVHCA). “By using AI tools that are listening to their visits in real time, they are able to put their focus back at the bedside instead of spending time behind a computer, which improves the quality and outcomes of the health care.”

In terms of administrative support, AI is assisting with documentation and simplifying daily hospital operations—such as scheduling and supply chain management—enhancing efficiency and giving providers more time to focus on patient care.

AI’s rapid integration into medicine requires the acknowledgement of its pitfalls in order to continue moving in a positive direction.

“AI in health care must be used responsibly. It mimics decision-making but lacks the human intuition essential to patient care,” Spence says.

One major risk of using AI is the potential over-reliance on its decision-making. Human intuition and deep understanding for patient-centered care is paramount in health care, and AI may result in inadequate oversight and, therefore, relying too heavily on a powerful machine that lacks the advantageous decision-making qualities of a real person.

Another significant concern revolves around data bias. “AI systems rely on the data they are trained on, which means any biases present in that data can lead to biased outcomes,” Spence says “In health care, this could result in disparities in diagnoses or treatment recommendations, particularly if an AI system has been trained on data that doesn’t represent a diverse patient population. To mitigate these risks, ongoing oversight, careful data selection and continuous monitoring are necessary to ensure AI supports equitable and effective patient care.”

Data privacy and security are additional aspects the medical field must take into consideration,
especially surrounding HIPPA regulations.

“A lot of the challenge in AI is to anonymize the data. There are a lot of debates right now over how, or if it’s even possible, to do this. AI can go back and theoretically put together the information to identify a person,” says Gordon Lane Jr, J.D., CHC, general counsel for WVHCA. “If we can’t find a way for it to be anonymous, then it could stop a lot of the AI tools from being used, and that especially comes up with things like clinical research.”

Other challenges include the possibility of job displacement, varying ethical implications, navigating regulations and up-to-date education on AI practices.

Despite these challenges, the many benefits of AI will lead to an inevitable continuation of its integration into health care. Beyond its current capabilities, experts expect further transformation of how medicine is practiced in the future.

“The future of AI in health care promises not only improved diagnostics but also enhanced patient engagement and increased accessibility to care,” says Spence.

This vision could appear in the form of advanced telemedicine, superior image analysis and early detection and more personalized medicine as well as the continued streamlining of workflows, drug discovery and IT operations.

“These future uses of AI differ from its current uses in that they represent a shift toward more proactive and personalized approaches to health care,” says Bannister. “By harnessing the power of AI to analyze complex datasets and identify patterns, the future of AI in health care aims to shift from reactive to proactive care, focusing on prediction, prevention and precision medicine.”