AI takes center stage at HIMSS Health Conference

Held in Chicago this week, the HIMSS Global Health Conference centered around the discussion of artificial intelligence and its role in healthcare, bringing together more than 35,000 physicians, executives, engineers and healthcare workers to discuss the latest advances in health and technology. We discussed.

Companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon prominently promote AI’s new health applications in booths across the expansive show floor, and panels of experts address industry-wide challenges such as staff shortages and physician burnout. Answered questions about how technology can be used to address

Many healthcare organizations and businesses have used AI in various capacities over the years, but late last year, when Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched a viral new chatbot called ChatGPT, , a subset known as generative AI exploded into public awareness. Generative AI refers to programs that can generate text and images with fairly complex prompts from end users.

Just as generative AI has captured the attention of the general public, so has the medical community.

AI is the focus of the opening keynote of the HIMSS conference, where HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf kicked off the discussion by revealing he asked ChatGPT how to solve global healthcare challenges . A membership-based organization called the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) organizes this conference each year.

While Wolf jokingly posed the question to ChatGPT, Microsoft’s global chief medical officer, David Rhew, said in an interview with CNBC that generative AI could be a “transformative solution” to solving big problems in the healthcare industry. ” says it’s possible.

“There are so many opportunities to apply these large-scale language models and artificial intelligence to clinical workflows that we need to do it responsibly,” he said.

For Rhew, that means starting with “high-impact, low-risk” uses of technology, such as streamlining administrative tasks.

Developing diagnostic or direct-to-patient generative AI applications is risky as it poses significant regulatory challenges for companies, academic institutions, and federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration. Rhew says AI is thinking as if the medical industry had just been introduced to cars, and stop signs, traffic lights and roads hadn’t yet been created.

“We still have to figure out how to do this together,” he said.

In the meantime, however, less regulatory oversight is required for administrative or “back office” tasks, and paperwork is often burdensome for clinicians, so there is a real need for efficient solutions.

A 2016 study funded by the American Medical Association found that for every hour doctors spent with their patients, they spent an additional two hours on administrative tasks. Physicians are more likely to spend an additional hour or two on office work outside of working hours, according to the study.

Similarly, in 2017 the Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges published a study. Respondents said about 24% of their working hours are spent on administrative tasks. More than two-thirds of his surveyed physicians report that administrative responsibility “has a negative impact on their ability to provide quality care.”

A HIMSS attendee told CNBC that he believes generative AI can help with these tasks.

On Monday, Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with Epic Systems, a medical software company that helps hospitals and other healthcare systems store, share and access electronic medical records. Over 160 million people use Epic’s MyChart software, giving patients direct access to their health information and care team.

The first application of Epic’s AI technology will automatically generate draft responses to messages doctors receive from patients through MyChart. Physicians are not required to use the proposed draft at all, but can save time if they choose to edit or send it.

In an interview with CNBC, Seth Hain, senior vice president of R&D at Epic, said AI could serve as an influential hypothesis-generating tool for doctors in the future. He said you can ask patient-specific questions, such as, “What do you think we should look into next for this issue?”

Peter Lee, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of research and incubation, told CNBC that seeing Epic’s early AI development brought tears to his eyes.

“It just blew me away,” he said.

Nuance Communications, Microsoft’s speech recognition subsidiary, also announced a clinical notes application called DAX Express ahead of HIMSS in March. DAX Express aims to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians by automatically creating clinical notes within seconds of a patient’s visit.

In a live demo at HIMSS, Nuance previewed future projects and showcased the capabilities of DAX Express. Several of the doctors, nurses, and medical workers in the room let out gasps and glee.

Other companies are also working to use generative AI to reduce administrative burdens.

Amazon Web Services announced on Monday an expanded partnership with Philips, a health technology company based in the Netherlands. AWS already supports many of Philips’ existing cloud-based and AI initiatives, including one that enables radiologists to analyze scans and medical images faster, even from home.

But Monday’s announcement also means Philips is using AWS generative AI technology to simplify clinical workflows and advance imaging capabilities even further.

Philips Chief Innovation Strategy Officer Shez Partovi said in an interview with CNBC, “The most exciting thing is the fact that we’re so close to the edge of this tipping point that makes the right thing easy.” With technology, the right thing is just a few clicks away.”

Partovi said every small task a doctor has to complete is like “1,000 cuts to die,” and using AI to solve administrative challenges will have a huge impact on doctors’ quality of life. said that it could give

On Tuesday, 3M Health Information Systems also announced that it is working with Amazon Web Services’ machine learning and generative AI to reduce the administrative workload for physicians. 3M HIS supports a conversational AI platform used by more than 300,000 physicians, and the company is releasing AWS technology to make it easier for physicians to automate and complete accurate clinical records of their electronic medical records. It is said that it will be

Similarly, Google Cloud last week announced the Claims Acceleration Suite, which uses AI to streamline health insurance claims processing and pre-approvals.

The current pre-approval process takes an average of 10 days, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Google’s AI reduces some of the administrative burden for healthcare providers by transforming unstructured data that appears in images, PDFs, or other health records into a more digestible, structured format help you to

Amy Waldron, Director of Global Health Plan Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud, said at a press conference at HIMSS. “Considering that someone has to take the time to put all the rich data in there and have an AI that can unlock that value, this makes absolutely no sense.”

Generative AI has “tremendous” potential to improve healthcare management efficiency, says Microsoft’s David Rhew. But as healthcare and technology companies become more sophisticated, industry leaders, regulators, and community academics must ensure that generative AI is fair and doesn’t harm communities.

This technology, if trained on healthcare data that does not adequately represent the patient population, can be susceptible to bias and discrimination, ultimately leading to poor decision-making and treatment planning.

As a result, Rhew said there is a shared responsibility to understand how to deploy AI carefully.

“It’s a game-changing technology, but we have to find a way to do it responsibly,” he said.