The Impact of AI on Patient Care and Experience

Few doctors and healthcare staff go into the field to sit in front of a computer all day. Their driving motivation is to improve the health of the people who come to them for care.

At the same time, the insertion of technology into the healthcare field has massively improved the care delivery that providers give. Coordination of care is more manageable, records are more accurate, and patient interaction improved.

So, what if there was something that leveraged the technology that improves patient care and experience and freed providers and their staff from tedious computer work? What if a technology solution helped providers rather than distracting them?

There is - artificial intelligence (AI). And it's already making a difference for patient experience and patient care.

3 AI Uses That are Improving Patient Care and Experience

Space-age Style, AI-driven Command Centers

Just a few short years ago, in 2019, two Florida hospitals and one in Washington implemented hospital coordinated care control centers reminiscent of the most advanced network operations and space program command centers.

These centers are using AI at their core to improve coordination of care and operations, ultimately improving both the patient experience and their continuum of care. Added by AI and advanced analytics, co-located experts can access a broad range of information about patients, their conditions, test results, and more to make critical decisions based on real-time data.

While patients won't ever interact with the command centers directly, their care is improved. One of the hospitals saw a drop in length of stay after just a few months of implementing the system.

AI and IoT Medical Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) has expanded healthcare treatment by allowing doctors to use devices to monitor vital signs and receive more accurate data than self-reported information and over more extended periods than an office visit.

AI takes that to the next level. Data can be collected via these devices and sent back to the provider, where an AI can monitor the information for indicators of a growing concern. The provider or her staff can then be alerted to potential problems, creating opportunities for proactive treatment.

Of course, the use of AI with medical devices goes beyond immediate care enhancement. AIs improve with increased data, so as more patients use these monitoring devices, more information will be fed to the AIs, further refining the AI's ability to spot trends and warning signs well in advance of a problem.

Mammograms and AI

Nearly one in eight women in the U.S. will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Spotting breast cancer is primarily a pattern matching effort, but that's time-consuming and error-prone. Nearly half of women getting mammograms were told they had signs of cancer, resulting in a large number of unnecessary biopsies.

Pattern matching, however, is something that AIs are especially good at. So it's no wonder that AI was put to use helping to diagnose breast cancer, such as Google's breast cancer screening tool. While these applications helped find the cancer, doctors still needed to define a treatment plan.

Dr. David Agus of the Lawrence J. Elison Institute for Transformative Medicine has worked with Salesforce researchers to change this. Using Salesforce's experience with AI, the ReceptorNet project was created. It uses AI to identify the subtle differences in patterns that indicate the most effective treatment direction. ReceptorNet's use of AI offers a faster, less expensive alternative to traditional treatment identification processes, like immunohistochemistry staining (IHC).

Patient Engagement and AI

Chatbots have become an essential part of customer service, even in healthcare. During COVID-19, healthcare providers set up chatbots to screen patients for symptoms. When those chatbots seemed competent and more human-like, patients were as accepting of the chatbot interactions as they were with human agents, but the chatbots were far more scalable. However, patient satisfaction dropped when the chatbot's competency was in question.

Using AI, a chatbot can learn to improve the quality of responses and the quality of their decision-making. Combining natural language processing (NLP) or natural language understanding (NLU), bots can better understand human speech or text and even learn to simulate human conversation.

Both the scalability and the satisfaction of users are a boon for healthcare providers looking to improve their patient's experiences. Wait times can be reduced, with only those genuinely needing the help of a human agent having to wait and subsequently shortening that time. Using a platform like Service Cloud from Salesforce, which can work seamlessly with Health Cloud, chatbots can even personalize their interactions and be deployed to multiple channels so that patients can access healthcare assistance using the channel that they most prefer.

Conclusion

AI has much to offer healthcare providers and even more to offer patients. Better, more streamlined, and more personal interactions can lead to better outcomes and even lower costs. With solutions like Health Cloud and Service Cloud, even small and mid-sized providers can add AI services into their care streams.

Six Consulting has worked with many providers to bring the advantages of Health Cloud and other Salesforce services into their practices. If you're interested in adding Salesforce to your toolset, contact us. We'll be happy to speak with you about how you can integrate Salesforce into your workflow to improve patient care and simplify operations.