Healthcare executives are banking on AI to unburden doctors, make processes smoother, and save time

“Anything we’re doing with AI that makes our care and clinical professionals’ jobs easy is my favorite,” said Tilak Mandadi, executive vice president of Ventures and chief digital, data, analytics and technology officer at CVS Health, in an on-stage panel discussion Monday. 

Mandadi pointed to the company’s implementation of AI-based case preparation that saves its healthcare professionals a substantial amount of time that can then be used to spend with their patients. 

Shiv Rao, the founder and CEO of Abridge, said that freeing clinicians of burdensome clerical work is one of his startup’s key goals. Rao, who is also a practicing cardiologist, said he has a first-hand understanding of the importance of everything that he documents for everyone he serves. “I have to write a clinical note, for example, to give other folks on the care team an idea of why I thought through this differential diagnosis, why I prescribed a certain diagnostic for therapeutics,” he said. 

“I also have to think about revenue cycle, because in this country, we’re not compensated for the care that we delivered, we’re compensated for the care that we documented that we delivered. So these documents have real implications on all things related to what keeps the lights on in the hospital.” 

For patients, timely and accurate information is vital to ensure that they’re not Googline medical info and becoming concerned. Abridge uses technology to combine all that information through fewer conversations, so the clinician can focus on the patient, Rao said.

Patricia Brennan, vice president of science technology at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, announced a new platform that the organization is launching. The platform will be “a one stop shop environment for biologists and ML developers,” she said, referring to machine learning developers. They’ll have access to models of biology across cell data, for one, and it’s designed to speed up biological research. 

Brennan’s organization — founded by Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscella Chan — has already been able to build the largest integrated data sets of single cell data that now represents over 100 million cells. You can see where that data comes from, too, which is where transparency that is desperately needed comes in. 

Will AI help with the error in insurance denial rates, asked Fortune’s Verne Kopytoff?  Mandadi seems to think it will, through speeding up processes, such as authorizations, or through informing consumers on what is covered and what isn’t. Overall, he sees AI reducing human error. Brennan touched on how AI could save time, and that in turn could lower costs.

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