By Dr Ed Hutchison, clinical solutions specialist, Altera Digital Health
AI is now impossible to ignore. You cannot move without seeing some sort of AI advert promising a capability that is going to revolutionise your life.
Need a new fridge? It better have inbuilt AI. Need to book a holiday? Why don’t you talk to our AI assistant. Want to create a presentation? Don’t bother, just let AI take care of it.
It has become a buzz phrase across every industry. Even Allbirds, a popular shoe company, recently ditched its entire business model to pivot into becoming an AI company.
Healthcare is clearly no different. Each catchy strapline promotes an AI offering that will transform your organisation into a digital health utopia.
Yet, through my clinical work, I see firsthand how the reality is often far more complex.
So how do we manage this landscape?
Or, maybe it is better to ask: How do we truly know what we need to improve our healthcare systems?
Certainly, one way is to speak to those that deliver healthcare. They can tell us their pain points. They can tell us their rate determining steps. They can tell us what they actually need solving to improve their patient care.
Jokes aside, I do believe that a lot of the AI hype is legitimate and we are increasingly starting to see some real benefits.
However, we always must pause and consider what we are aiming to achieve with AI, rather than racing ahead with no clear goal.
Likewise, we must always remember the foundations of digital health: useable hardware and deeply interoperable and integrated EPR software.
No amount of AI is going to fix the broken mouse at my computer. No amount of AI is going to instantly remove paper notes. Don’t try to ice the cake you haven’t baked yet.
That said, who doesn’t still enjoy a taste of the icing while the cake is in the oven?
While firming up the foundations, we are right to explore the benefits that AI can bring and begin to embrace its potential.
Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) is one such example.
One of my favourite stats is that resident doctors spend around 80 per cent of their time documenting and doing admin. This leaves minimal time to do actual “doctor-ing” or spend time with the patient.
Telling clinicians that their documents could be seamlessly written as a byproduct of a conversation will always be welcome. But only if the solution they are using doesn’t then slow them down in other ways.
Is it accurate? Does it pick up conversational nuance? Is it running natively in my EPR? Does it need a separate login? Can health issues and requests be automatically captured and integrated into the patient record?
If the answer is no, then there is still work to be done.
Other examples include using AI to provide patient summaries or prompt the user in the EPR on what actions might have been missed or need completing.
A clinical shift is an overwhelming assault on the senses and trying to remember everything that needs actioning can be a challenge.
Just watch an episode of “The Pitt”. Any help is appreciated.
Helping where and when it counts
AI that is built into existing EPRs and workflows, that summarises the key details, prompts the user with pre-configured request forms or automatically triggers care pathways is what I, as a user, want.
Don’t try to change my life, just help me do an already difficult job a little more efficiently and reduce the time spent on admin. I am sure I am not alone.
Speak to the users, watch how they work, then create the solution.
With this in mind, it will be a surprise to no one that at Altera, like every other supplier, we are fully behind developing the best AI solutions and products we can for our NHS users.
With these developments, we are always aiming for our solutions to truly address a problem faced by the user.
We have our AVT solution Sunrise™ Thread AI that is building on existing best practices but with full, native integration into the Sunrise EPR, enabling the tool to intuitively form part of existing workflows.
Similarly, Sunrise™ Pulse AI and Sunrise™ Axon AI will provide AI-enhanced searches of the record alongside clinical nudges to guide and support the user, right in the EPR.
It is AI that is there to support, not steal the limelight. Through close work with our existing clients, we hope to ensure that our AI tools provide what the user needs to best deliver care to their patients. That will always be our focus.
As we continue to bake that cake, we are right to be planning the icing. Maybe even to consider the cherry on top.
But let’s ensure that AI solutions are integrated and the user is at the centre of every decision we take with development.
With their input, we can ensure that the real benefits of AI can be realised.
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