In many countries, the social care sector is suffering from enormous cost-cutting pressures, labor shortages, and increasing demand for its services. Finland's VTT Technical Research Center is participating with partners in an international research project on how artificial intelligence (AI) can support nurses' work. In addition to VTT, Finnish participants include the University of Applied Sciences of Torque, the University of Eastern Finland, North Savo, and the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland, Medikenstar, Oiva Health, and Solita.
Various digital tasks, such as registering patients, reviewing patient information, familiarizing with instructions and giving them, take up a large portion of a nurse's daily working time. Reducing the time consumed in these tasks with the help of better technological solutions has the potential to free up working time for patient encounters and reduce nurses' workload.
For example, German consultant TLGG estimates that if used properly, artificial intelligence can save nurses more than 30% of their working time.
Jouni Kaartinen, senior scientist at VTT
Together with Finnish higher education institutions, well-being service districts and businesses, VTT is developing solutions to reduce nurses' workload using AI. This work is being carried out in collaboration with several European countries as part of an ITEA benefit project. Ville Salaspuro, medical director at Finnish Mediconsult Oy, believes that using AI-based tools will become an important part of the future work of social care and medical professionals. “These tools make the work of professionals more efficient. Instead of spending time on information systems, they have more time to focus on their customers. This project is a great way to develop AI-based tools in a real operational environment. provides a concrete opportunity to validate the use of Saraspro. Medical professionals involved in development “A traditional problem in the medical field is that nursing professionals are not involved in technology development.As a result, the functionality or ease of use of a system does not always support nursing work. Moreover, evidence on the impact of different solutions on research, research and the operation of research organizations is still scarce,” says Associate Professor Laura Maria Peltonen from the University of Eastern Finland. According to Kaartinen, artificial intelligence could, for example, automatically and illustrate relevant patient information to experts via graphical or voice interfaces. AI could also become a great assistant to instruct patients when they seek help, during their hospital stay, and afterwards. This facilitates access to appropriate services, reduces repeat visits, and improves treatment monitoring.
“Nurse-centricity is at the core of the project. The technology developed will be brought to nursing students for testing. In this way we will foster end-user acceptance of the new technology and ensure that it exists “Learn how to develop to prevent it from being perceived as a threat or clumsy from a usability perspective,'' says Paula Savolainen, senior lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Turku. Data availability is a challenge that Kaartinen says the difficulty of obtaining the necessary data is significantly hindering the development of AI solutions in healthcare. Healthcare involves so much jargon terminology that it's paramount to train truly useful conversational AI with comprehensive materials: authentic, anonymous speech data, patient data, and Other healthcare documents. “Much health data is already digitized, so capturing it securely for research and product development creates significant benefits. However, this has become complicated from a legal perspective. Ultimately, consent-based data benefits all parties,” says Kaartinen. “Software companies are required by law to protect the personal information and data of their customers. The Profit Project develops technical solutions and operational methods that enable the use of data in accordance with the law,” says Solita's research director. says Manu Sesha. In the initial stages of the project, the AI solution will be trained using data from nursing students' practical tasks and various simulated data. Some ethical issues need to be resolved. Despite the use of AI, decision-making and responsibility will remain with the experts.
According to Kaartinen, AI could not, for example, make direct entry into patient or customer records without the individual approval of a specialist. Instead, the AI can make entry suggestions that experts can accept as-is or with modifications. This project examines the acceptability and ethics of AI-assisted solutions from both the nurse and customer perspectives.
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Finnish VTT Technology Research Center
