Abhinav Raj, Writer
@uxconnections
Here’s a brief look into how innovators and entrepreneurs are capitalizing on generative AI to empower healthcare delivery in 2023.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been spearheading technological change across a range of industries for the past couple of years—be it automotive, consumer technology, or healthcare. The undeniable benefits that AI developers and entrepreneurs have showcased across these diverse industries demonstrate the tremendous potential of AI to benefit all.
Here are a few startups which are leveraging AI to empower healthcare systems.
Medical Documentation, Powered by AI
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
“If you can’t move your hand at all, repeated practice can be very frustrating, but the games we are developing will offer a more rewarding experience,” explained Cogitat CEO Allan Ponniah in a statement to the UKRI.
Administrative tasks, such as documentation, take up an excessive amount of valuable time for healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses.
According to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2018, which surveyed over 20,000 physicians in the United States, it was found that more than one-third of the respondents spent more than 20 hours a week solely on paperwork.
This is an alarming trend that suggests that healthcare providers may be losing a significant amount of time completing administrative tasks rather than providing patient care.
A Pittsburgh-based startup, known as Abridge, has come up with an innovative solution to curb the burden of documentation through generative AI.
Abridge’s generative AI tool works by identifying a set of key points that come up in a conversation between healthcare providers and patients to create and consolidate a detailed summary of information exchanged in a format that is preferred by the staff in real time.
The tool helps healthcare providers save a significant amount of time and labour spent on documentation after the end of the visit, and at the same time can be used to help patients recall information received by doctors through AI-generated notes and create automated reminders detailing their next key steps, such as purchasing medication or booking another visit.
The startup has recently partnered with The University of Kansas Health System to deploy generative AI in healthcare, and will potentially support over 1,500 practicing physicians across 140 locations by optimizing patient-provider interactions.
Enhancing Patient Privacy with Machine Learning
Photo by Dan Nelson on Unsplash
Across the UK, Europe and the Americas, significant emphasis has been placed by regulators and legislations to protect patient data as failing to safeguard health data carries severe ramifications—such as reputational damage, penalties and lawsuits for businesses and organizations and the risk of identity theft, privacy rights violation and threat to the financial security of individuals.
Silicon Valley startup Syntegra has endeavoured to consolidate and preserve the privacy of health data through the application of machine learning (ML) and generative AI.
The San Francisco-based startup’s proprietary generative AI technology works by generating synthetic health data that, while retaining the fidelity of real data, safeguards patient privacy. The tool, dubbed the ‘Syntegra Medical Mind’ utilizes ‘transformer-based language models’ (a type of AI model that uses large neural networks to generate natural language text) to create ‘realistic but not real’ synthetic data. According to Syntegra, this synthetic data retains the statistical accuracy of the actual dataset, however, this cannot be traced back to patients—which protects their privacy from threats.
Syntegra’s novel application of generative AI offers valuable insights to healthcare practitioners through data science while safeguarding patient privacy against potential breaches.
As it becomes a subject of a growing body of research and development, artificial intelligence is becoming more resilient and reliable, with powerful applications in the design and delivery of healthcare across the world.
Generative AI is evolving, and its potential applications in healthcare are expected to grow, potentially leading to more efficient healthcare delivery and improved patient outcomes.
