Streamlining engagements, simplifying jargon, and enhancing adherence, AI transforms healthcare experiences. From online scheduling optimization to personalized care plans based on genetics, it fosters tailored, empathetic communication. Proactive outreach, powered by AI, ensures no patient is overlooked. Its role in triaging inquiries and integrating diverse datasets redefines healthcare efficiency.
A healthcare consultant explores how automation is revolutionizing tailored patient engagement, fostering better adherence to care plans, and delivering more personalized healthcare experiences. Hospitals and larger health systems are embracing AI in diverse ways, aiming to enhance patient experiences and engagement, ultimately striving to reduce health disparities.
Tom Kiseau, the digital leader and chief innovation officer at Chartis, orchestrates AI roundtables with industry colleagues and experts, delving into insightful discussions. In our conversation, he sheds light on various aspects learned from these dialogues.
He shares insights on leveraging AI models by physicians to simplify complex medical jargon and concepts, thereby ensuring patients grasp crucial information easily. Additionally, he underscores AI’s role in tailoring engagement, promoting better care plan adherence, and its potential in leveraging genetic and family history data already stored in hospitals’ systems.
Q. How did you envision AI benefiting patient experiences initially?
A. Today’s patient experience often suffers from friction points in the healthcare journey, leading to confusion about the next steps and communication gaps. Healthcare providers struggle to establish seamless access to appropriate care and cultivate trusting relationships with patients. Patients simply desire an accessible, responsive, and personalized healthcare experience. AI’s capacity to understand, automate operations, and predict future steps holds immense potential in reducing patient frustrations along their healthcare journey.
For example, AI streamlines online scheduling by amalgamating patient preferences, current care positions, provider specialties, appointment availability, and geographic data. This optimizes patient decisions, ensuring access to the most suitable and convenient care. During visits, AI facilitates more engaged patient-provider interactions by transcribing clinical encounters and integrating structured notes into electronic health records. This streamlines follow-ups, referrals, and future appointment scheduling.
Moreover, AI continuously customizes care plans and resources, considering each patient’s evolving health needs. Providers increasingly use AI to craft personalized disease risk profiles, incorporating family history, genetic mapping, social influences, activities, and behaviors. By leveraging extensive population health data, patients gain personalized insights into their health status, fostering engagement and empowering adherence to personalized care plans.
Q. You advocate AI’s role in simplifying complex medical jargon for patient comprehension. Could you elaborate on this and its outcomes?
A. AI serves as a potent tool for healthcare providers, delivering tailored written communications across various digital and physical channels. Patients possess diverse comprehension levels spanning languages, clinical expertise, interest, and reading skills. Adapting content and communication styles becomes transformative in enhancing patient understanding, engagement, and long-term adherence to care plans.
Recent iterations of generative AI, like ChatGPT, adeptly modify content to suit individual reading levels. Providers can efficiently document technical details, allowing AI to translate this jargon into easily digestible language for patients. This not only improves efficiency for physicians but also enhances the quality and empathy perceived by patients in the final communication.
AI also facilitates accurate translation of medical jargon into different languages, aiding patients with limited English proficiency or non-native speakers. Studies highlight improved outcomes when care plans are communicated in patients’ native languages, underscoring the significance of AI in bridging language barriers and adapting communication to various reading levels.
Generative AI tools can condense lengthy discharge plans into concise summaries, ensuring patients comprehend their healthcare situation, actions required, rationale, and forthcoming steps from their care team.
Q. You also suggest that AI-tailored engagement enhances care plan adherence and proactive patient outreach. How does this translate into improved patient experiences?
A. Beyond operational enhancements and language adaptations, AI helps segment patient cohorts based on health needs and preferences, aiding providers in targeted engagement strategies. As healthcare systems diversify access points, AI assists in understanding patients’ meaningful engagement channels, crucial for personalized care.
AI identifies proactive outreach opportunities, engaging patients in discussions about health status or sending customized reminders for preventive care. This proactive approach in value-based care fosters an ‘always on’ environment, preventing patients from falling through the healthcare system’s cracks. AI supports the identification and engagement of patients who haven’t utilized healthcare for prolonged periods, ensuring they receive timely preventive care.
Organizations employ AI for proactive engagement through preferred communication channels, encouraging patients to schedule annual wellness visits. Given the low participation rates in such visits, proactive engagement becomes pivotal for better health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
Additionally, AI aids in triaging and responding to patient inquiries across various channels. Integration of AI into operational models significantly boosts staff, care team, and patient satisfaction, crucial for effective healthcare delivery.
Q. Lastly, how can AI facilitate genetics and family history in healthcare systems?
A. The burgeoning field of big data in genetics necessitates advanced AI solutions. AI efficiently processes vast genetic datasets, uncovering novel links between biomarkers and diseases. It mines data to identify patient cohorts and match them with ongoing clinical trials, improving treatment precision and trial selection.
Integrating genetic data with diverse datasets like social influences empowers providers to better understand and plan for patients’ unique health challenges. AI assists in analyzing data points related to social factors like poverty rates, food access, and environmental conditions, providing insights crucial for personalized patient care.
AI’s potential in healthcare transcends traditional boundaries, fostering personalized, proactive, and precise healthcare experiences, ultimately benefiting patient well-being and healthcare efficiency.
AI’s integration reshapes patient experiences, optimizing care delivery and engagement. Its ability to adapt language, segment patient cohorts, and facilitate proactive outreach amplifies healthcare efficiency. By unraveling genetic data and diverse social indicators, AI enables personalized care plans, transcending traditional healthcare boundaries. The integration of AI augments healthcare teams, elevating patient satisfaction and well-being, and promising a future of tailored, empathetic, and proactive healthcare experiences.
