GE Healthcare's July partnership with Amazon Web Services to develop artificial intelligence tools for analyzing health data signals a growing push to use AI to make sense of healthcare's vast and underused data.
In clinical settings, AI is making inroads through advanced note-taking systems: These tools use natural language processing and speech recognition to transcribe and analyze patient-clinician interactions.
“Automating clinical workflow activities such as clinical documentation, coding, prior authorizations and medication reconciliation allows providers to spend more time focusing on patients rather than splitting their attention between patients and administrative tasks,” Brad Boyd, national healthcare industry co-leader at BDO USA, told PYMNTS.
This change could be crucial in addressing health workforce shortages, especially in primary care.
“The primary care relationship has deteriorated over the past few years, with patients turning to retail and urgent care providers for timely medical care,” Boyd said.
Dr. Innocent Clement, CEO and founder of Ciba Health, highlighted further benefits.
“AI-powered clinical record generation enhances doctor-patient interactions, improves accuracy and empowers patients to take a more active role in their health care through transparent access to their medical information,” Clement told PYMNTS.
However, integrating AI into clinical practice is not without controversy.
“There is a special dynamic between patient and doctor in terms of personal contact and trust that could be affected,” Teri Sea Newton, MD, of the international law firm Mintz, told PYMNTS. “Patients may feel like their doctor is not paying as much attention to what they're saying about their medical condition.”
Despite these concerns, many experts believe the potential benefits outweigh the risks.
“AI-powered tools act as assistants that can be trained to collect and summarize information in a compliant and accurate manner,” Valerie Reich, vice president of healthcare strategy at Hero Digital, told PYMNTS.
Accelerating Drug Discovery
AI has the potential to impact drug development beyond the doctor's office. Traditional methods often rely on educated guesses and time-consuming trials. AI has the potential to make this process more targeted and efficient.
“These drugs trigger a chain reaction of immune events within the immune system, similar to a complex chain of dominoes falling one after the other,” Noam Solomon, CEO of biotech company Immunai, told PYMNTS. “Ultimately, this chain of immune events helps the body achieve a clinical cure.”
Solomon also highlighted the potential of AI in drug discovery.
“One of the biggest challenges facing drug discovery and development is that despite great scientific advances, much of the early R&D is still based on guesswork. And this is where AI has the greatest potential.”
Sy Newton added that AI capabilities could be expanded further to enable “multi-omics approaches where data sets from different perspectives can be combined in ways that are only computationally possible.”
But like any powerful tool, AI in drug discovery raises ethical questions. Clement noted there are concerns about “accessibility, affordability, and potential unintended consequences of new treatments.”
Solomon asked: “What if, thanks to AI, the human lifespan becomes 400 years instead of 85? Would we have the financial resources to deal with the population explosion?”
Brad Stewart, national life sciences industry leader for BDO USA, pointed to a more immediate concern.
“A more pressing ethical issue in the near term is the use of AI to review data that has traditionally relied on human expertise and duplicative review,” he said. “This shift can bring new risks and challenges that will need to be carefully managed to ensure the integrity and reliability of the data.”
Pharmacy operations optimization
The application of AI in healthcare extends to pharmacy operations. The technology helps in supply chain planning, inventory management, and pricing strategies. By processing vast amounts of data, AI tools help pharmacies optimize their operations and stay competitive.
The collaboration between GE HealthCare and AWS is one sign of the growing momentum of AI in healthcare. As these tools evolve, they could transform the landscape of wasted healthcare data and usher in an era of more personalized, efficient, and effective care.
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Read more: Amazon Web Services , artificial intelligence , BDO USA , Brad Boyd , Brad Stewart , Ciba Health , digital transformation , Dr. Innocent Clement , Dr. Terri Shieh-Newton , GE Healthcare , GenAI , healthcare , Hero Digital , Immunai , innovation , Mintz , news , Noam Solomon , partnerships , PYMNTS News , technology , Valerie Reich
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