AI technologies are giving some doctors more time for patients, improving health care AI

New tech in the health industry

At Allegheny Health Network, new technologies are being developed and implemented daily. So far, more than 300 providers at AHN have started using AI.

Ashis Barad, a physician who serves as AHN’s chief digital information officer, said the health system started using AI to record and summarize health visits. This new technology, called ambient listening, is intended to shorten the time it takes to file medical records.

Ambient listening uses an audio recording from the health visit and transcribes it in real time before transforming the recording into a summary. This summary is then edited and approved by a physician before being stored.

Barad said it takes doctors 16 minutes, on average, to file medical records after a health visit. Ambient listening technology can dramatically reduce that time and gives doctors more time for other things, such as spending time with patients.

“We hope that doctors also get to take time where they say … I want a refreshment break (or) I need to use the bathroom,” Barad said. “You think these are simple things, but sometimes when you’re in the throes of (the) clinic, I know plenty of doctors that have waited hours to just go get a drink because they just have so many patients waiting for them.”

Other hospitals such as Penn Medicine and UPMC also have begun using ambient listening in their buildings to help doctors focus on face-to-face interactions with patients.

“A lot of doctors are feeling a sense of burnout, and it’s because of the work that needs to be done … (and) the increasing demands of us to correspond with patients,” said William Hanson, chief medical information officer for Penn Medicine.

Chris Carmody, chief technology officer and senior vice president of UPMC, said system hospitals have implemented nine electronic health record systems.

“It’s shifting our nurses, our doctors away from doing the documentation, having it automatically done so they can focus on a patient,” Carmody said.

While AI has been cutting down on doctors’ time charting, it also has begun to help predict patient behavior and risk factors.

Researchers at Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical System and Penn State University are implementing AI programs that predict people’s risk of infection and disease.

Dr. Liu Dajiang, a health sciences professor and director of artificial intelligence and medical informatics at Penn State’s college of medicine, said doctors are using AI to determine someone’s genetic risk score.

“A lot of people are lucky to be born with some genetic mutations that protect them from developing disease, regardless of their lifestyle,” Dajiang said. “The idea for these algorithms is to figure out what are the protective variants and how they function, so that we can develop a drug that mimics those.”

Using AI, Dajiang said it will become possible to use medical records to quickly conduct DNA sequencing, a practice that can pinpoint genetic disorders. DNA sequencing cost billions of dollars at the beginning of the 21st century, but with AI technologies, prices could drop to a few hundred dollars per patient.

AI also can cut the time between diagnosis and treatment in some cases.

UPMC Enterprises recently created Realyze Intelligence Inc. to match cancer patients with clinical trials at their first visit, helping patients start treatment sooner, Carmody said.