Could AI really revolutionise care?

2 years ago
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Care coordination and triage is a complex process that involves managing patients journeys across different healthcare settings and systems. It is a critical aspect of healthcare delivery that ensures patients receive the right care at the right time from the right care giver via the right channel.

The approach today often involves a lot of manual processes that are time-consuming and prone to errors. Why do accept compromise in something we value so much like healthcare? We shouldn't!

With the advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), there is a massive opportunity to revolutionise care coordination & triage through the use of AI powered recommendations based on the context of the conversation.

You’ve all probably heard of ChatGPT by now and how it has been trained on massive amounts of data and generates human-like responses. ChatGPT can be integrated into the workflows of triagists  to improve patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency, here are some of the use cases:

AI-assisted triage

Triage is the process of determining the urgency and priority of patients' medical needs. We can leverage ChatGPT’s NLP capabilities to analyse patient realtime transcription of calls and messages to identify the most critical issues and highlight them to the healthcare provider. This can help them prioritise patients and ensure they receive the necessary care as quickly as possible.

Streamlining care coordination

Using AI assistants we're able to automate certain tasks like note taking during meetings, recording and transcribing calls with patients allowing searching across voice conversations intuitively, and updating patient records; reducing the administrative burden on healthcare providers and ensure that patients receive timely care.

Providing next best action recommendations

Based on the context of the conversation, it can provide recommendations for the next best actions, for example, if a patient reports symptoms of a specific condition, it can recommend some appropriate diagnostic tests and treatment options, enabling healthcare providers to make a more informed decision and ensure that patients receive the best possible care.

Improving patient engagement

By providing patients with tailored advice like information on healthy lifestyle choices or recommend activities to help manage their chronic condition, it empowers them to control back and play a more active role in the improvement of their own condition.

Conclusion

As healthcare delivery continues to evolve, healthcare providers look for ways to improve the quality of care, while at the same time increase its efficiency to allow for better scalability. As the population ages and the demand increases, the use of AI tools like ChatGPT is playing an increasingly critical role in the way we provide healthcare. It has the potential to dramatically improve the overall patient experience

However, it's important to note that AI should be used to augment the work of healthcare providers, not replace them entirely.