Medical practitioners are starting to realize the awesome potential of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into the world of medicine. While AI holds the potential to streamline processes and improve patient outcomes, experts caution against an unregulated embrace of these technologies. Second, there is increasing pressure to use AI tools in healthcare. Chatbots, specifically, are growing and emerging as key tools to manage constituent inquiries and address administrative tasks.
Dr. Sneha Jain, a family physician and former National Health Service Corps member. As a case manager, she processes hundreds, if not thousands of prior authorization requests each week. These administrative tasks alone eat up the equivalent of almost half of a primary care physician’s time, drastically cutting down on the time available to care for patients.
Dr. Sina Bari, a practicing surgeon and healthcare AI visionary at iMerit, recently discovered a painful statistic. This jaw dropping statistic is connected to a drug that was born out of a research project targeting a very specific subset of people with tuberculosis. He raises concerns on the reliability of AI systems. This worry is exacerbated when patients are unable to critically assess the medical information provided by chatbots.
For all his worries, Dr. Bari sees promise in the use of AI to improve healthcare, quipping, “I think it’s great.” More than 230 million people reportedly chat with ChatGPT about their health every week. This massive activation serves as a reminder of just how powerful the platform has become. All of the experts we spoke to for this story cautioned against relying on AI chatbots for medical information. Perhaps most disappointingly, they can propagandize patients by spreading false claims.
Dr. Nigam Shah is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and the chief data scientist for Stanford Health Care. He makes the case that AI adoption should fundamentally augment provider abilities rather than speaking directly to patients. He notes that “right now, you go to any health system and you want to meet the primary care doctor – the wait time will be three to six months. Would you prefer waiting half a year in order to speak with an actual physician? Or would you rather have a conversation with someone—who’s not a doctor—but can still better assist you?”
AI innovations, such as Claude for Healthcare, created by Anthropic, are helping to alleviate some of the burden clinicians face by freeing up their time from drudgery tasks. If officially adopted for streamlining processes, these technologies have the potential to increase efficiency enormously across healthcare environments. Dr. Jain supports this initiative, stating that “making the electronic medical record more user friendly means physicians can spend less time scouring every nook and cranny of it for the information they need.”
In line with this vision, Dr. Shah leads a team at Stanford developing ChatEHR, a software integrated into electronic health records (EHR). ChatEHR’s goal is to make it easier for clinicians to engage with the information contained within a patient’s medical record. Dr. Jain believes that “ChatEHR can help them get that information up front so they can spend time on what matters — talking to patients and figuring out what’s going on.”
The use of AI in healthcare brings up crucial questions of patient safety and data integrity. Dr. Bari believes that there should be more detailed guidance around using AI. These guidelines will protect patient information and harness the immense power of AI for its benefits. He states, “It is something that’s already happening, so formalizing it so as to protect patient information and put some safeguards around it is going to make it all the more powerful for patients to use.”
As the technology in the AI space progresses, so does the conversation surrounding AI in healthcare. While tools like ChatGPT and other AI-driven applications offer promising opportunities for improved patient care and operational efficiency, experts caution against uncritical acceptance of their capabilities.
Dr. Bari highlights the tension inherent in this discussion: “I think that tension is an important one.” His message is that healthcare providers need to be the one to safeguard patient data. Meanwhile, they must use AI’s power wisely.
As healthcare professionals continue to explore the possibilities of incorporating AI technologies into their practices, it is imperative to prioritize innovation with caution. Especially considering the potential time savings. Now picture ALMOST CUTTING OUT twenty or thirty minutes of administrative work…now THAT is a game-changer for clinicians AND patients alike.
