What will be Healthcare’s next big AI use case after the Environment Scribe?
Over the past few years, Ambient scribes have become a clear breakthrough use case for AI in healthcare.
Unlike other AI tools, environmental copying has nearly the world’s interest and adoption in health systems, he noted in a recent interview Daniel Yang, vice president of AI and emerging technologies at Kaiser Permanente.
For example, Yang’s health system launched Abridge’s transcription tool last year in 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices.
So why does environmental copying technology stand out in such an important way? Yang attributes this success to three factors.
First is the high demand from clinicians – clinicians have been clamoring for tools that can reduce burnout and improve quality of life.
By automatically generating draft notes, AI-powered scribes can use clinicians to spend time on notes from hours to minutes, giving them valuable time they had to spend money to catch up with this administrative task before. Young recalls that he recently heard a doctor’s statement, which was: “AI scribe doesn’t make me a better doctor, it makes me a better mom.”
“It has attracted a lot of interest – reducing pajama time, people are able to get their jobs done and go home, feel more rested and have more good time with their families,” he explained.
The next factor Yang highlighted is the reason for the widespread adoption of AI scribes is their advantageous security. He said the tools require that the doctors be in a circulating state at all times and do not directly affect diagnosis or treatment.
He also points out the importance of low integration barriers for tools, as most vendors sell AI scribes that can be quickly adopted without deeper EHR integration.
Although AI scribes are reaching scale, challenges remain in increasing adoption of other AI use cases. Hospitals have great interest in other AI tools – Yang said that despite the exciting areas such as AI proxy and rejection management, there is no other use case to reach the traction level of environmental scribes.
“I think it’s worth asking a question: Why doesn’t healthcare find the next big use case after the environmental scribe?” he said.
Yang added that the category that will eventually reach a wide scale may need to replicate three factors he believes are responsible for the success of AI Scribes – high-level clinician adoption, strong safety and no excitement integration. He pointed out that the adoption of clinicians is especially critical.
The most important determinant of success is whether the clinician think To use the tool, Yang said – if the AI product cannot be delivered in that respect, it is unlikely to reach its true scale.
Photo: Sylverarts, Getty Images
