AI Moves From the Drawing Board to the Doctor’s Toolkit

Three large health systems have announced plans to put AI to use to address clinical care gaps

Now that they’re seeing AI in action, health systems are putting the technology to use to address clinical care gaps.

WellSpan Health, UMass Memorial Health, and Intermountain Health have all announced new collaborations aimed at using AI in clinical settings. WellSpan Health will be developing ambient AI tools to capture doctor-patient conversations, a compelling use case that was discussed at the recent ViVE conference, while UMass Memorial and Intermountain are targeting chronic care management.

The announcements, on the eve of the HIMSS 2024 conference in Orlando, speak to the rapid state of AI development and deployment, as well as the pressure put on healthcare executives to address problems that are affecting their doctors, nurses, and patients.  

WellSpan Health announced this week that it will be deploying Nuance’s DAX (Dragon Ambient eXperience) Copilot throughout the eight-hospital, 220+ care site health system to improve documentation during exam room and telehealth visits. The AI tool is designed to capture provider-patient conversations and create clinical summaries that the care provider can review immediately after the visit and enter into the EHR.

“We have long recognized the central importance of the quality of each patient’s experience in every interaction with our health system and especially with their primary care and other providers,” Hal Baker, SVP and chief digital and information officer for the Pennsylvania-based health system, said in a press release. “With DAX Copilot, we [are] …  giving our clinicians additional state-of-the-art tools to lessen administrative burdens, reduce the time needed to complete documentation, enhance their ability to deliver high-quality personalized care and expand access to care. Patients also appreciate the benefits of DAX Copilot knowing that they have their doctor’s full and undivided attention during their visits.”

WellSpan and Nuance, part of Microsoft’s stable of tech companies, have been working together for several years, with an earlier version of DAX deployed in 2020. Health system officials say a survey of providers found that 94% said the technology improved the quality of their interactions with patients, while 85% said it improved their work-life balance.

UMass Memorial Health and Google Cloud, meanwhile, are joining forces to leverage AI and other tools in the treatment of patients living with cardiometabolic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and obesity.

"Our mission is to provide the best possible care to our patients, and this partnership with Google Cloud is a significant step forward,” Michael Hyder, MD, MPH, executive director of the UMass Memorial Center for Digital Health Solutions and an associate professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, said in a press release issued this week. “By using data-driven insights to identify patients who would benefit from advanced cardiometabolic therapies, we aim to elevate the high standard of care we provide." 

And Intermountain Health and Memora Health are partnering to integrate the latter’s technology platform into the 33-hospital, 400+ site health system’s EHR, initially to automate tasks and  improve care management for oncology care teams and patients before expanding to other departments.

“The moment a person is diagnosed with cancer, their life changes,” Derrick Haslem, MD, Intermountain’s senior medical director for cancer care, said in a press release issued on Tuesday. “Being able to provide consistent communication with patients to address questions and concerns about their care is critical and very important to us. Memora’s technology helps our busy care teams with daily tasks and empowers them to focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality care to our patients.”

The partnerships point to a need for healthcare organizations to put AI to work now, rather than waiting for governance to catch up.