With investment and adoption in artificial intelligence barrels ahead of it, the healthcare industry is full of both opportunities and challenges.
Recent AI, AI leaders, UVA leaders, and beyond sponsored by UVA Health's Health Leadership Institute, Virginia Darden School of Business, and UVA School of Data Science, have actively adopted AI applications to gain efficiency, save money, improve patient outcomes, and frequently attack ecosioles.
Leaders also explain the frequently opposing forces of needing to move quickly to utilize new tools while working in environments where human life is at stake, and easy-to-understand attention permeates organizational thinking.
Dr. Girish Nadkarni, chairman of the AI and Human Health Department at Mount Sinai, explained the environment in which health systems are data-rich and can convert data into actionable insights using new, accessible AI models. Health centers such as Mount Sinai actively use AI applications to identify signs of heart failure using ECGs, detect nerve damage that may be missed by the human eye, and to find patients who meet the criteria of clinical trials.
Despite this excitement about innovation, Nadokarni said the industry is suffering from a “paradox” that includes ideas that have been thoroughly researched but have not come to technology-driven implementations that have been under-researched.
Nadkarni said the industry needs to drive innovation in technology and AI, but it has the ability to quickly revise courses in the event of fraudulent deployment.
“We need to incorporate and codify the essential principles of humanism into our healthcare system,” Nadkarni said. “The success and principles of the AI age are the same as any era of human achievement: it requires compassion, leadership, and thoughtfulness.
In a panel discussion with UVA leaders, hosted by Darden Dean Scott Beardsley, Professor Darden Vivian Riefberg, Professor AI is actively used while enhancing access and patient care, reducing costs.
Previously McKinsey & Co. Riefberg, who led US healthcare practices, described the AI applications he currently uses in virtual emergency care practices in major health systems such as Cedars-Sinai. Patients who are typically urgently seeking to be “see” first by the AI application asking the most appropriate questions, allowing them to consider the patient's medical history and calculate the likelihood of a diagnosis.
Recent studies in internal medicine chronicles explain that app recommendations are mostly alongside doctors, and more often rated “better quality” when human and app recommendations differ, Riefberg pointed out. Although this study does not suggest that AI should replace physicians, the technology could effectively support physicians' decisions.
The app is designed to be “humble,” said Riefberg, “it was built to admit when you shouldn't make a judgment.”
How to split tasks between humans and AI for optimal happiness was a recurring theme of the symposium.
Dr. J. Scott Just (MBA '14), CEO of the UVA Physicians Group, noted that Microsoft Dax Copilot has deployed to 600 clinicians throughout the healthcare system. The so-called ambienting technology ensures that you record your visits firmly, and keep track of clinical notes (banes that take time for many clinicians), and immediately after the end of the appointment.
“It improved the joy and practice of medicine,” Just said. “We are expanding and extending the career of clinicians. The patient experience has improved. Now, doctors don't have to spend time documenting on computers, and clinicians can attend patients and engage with patients in this better, healthier way.”
He just said that saving time from AI assistants appears to increase job satisfaction while increasing patient appointments.
Dr. Meg Keely (TEP '16), a senior associate dean for UVA Medical School Education, described the impact of the rapidly changing landscape on medical school education. Given the rapid advances in the healthcare landscape, health education has long felt that it is “building planes in flight,” Keeley said. With the advent of AI, “planes are about to fly at sound speed,” she said.
There are certain simple applications currently in use at UVA School of Medicine. This includes scoring and assignments that supported physicians' communication skills through the use of AI patient actors and previously recruited key talent. The school is also working towards what Keely called “Precision Medical Education,” using a dashboard that identifies student trends and creates individually tailored plans for repairs where necessary.
Additionally, medical students now learn rapid generation as a basic clinical skill.
“It's important that people understand how to generate prompts and use AI as a consulting tool to learn how to generate diagnosis and make clinical reasoning, but it can't replace humans,” Keely said. “As a human, you really know that you are responsible for the truthfulness of that information…we must remain enthusiastic about maintaining humanity as part of the equation.”
In an industry where, like many, can be skeptical of change, Riefberg suggests that physicians and healthcare leaders are “open-minded” about new tools, not only considering what is wrong, but also “what can we go right?”
Riefberg proposed that by partnering with trusted partners in academia and industry, opportunities exist to think beyond institutional barriers.
“If you keep reinventing the wheels ourselves, we don't have enough money or time,” Leafberg said.
UVA AI is advancing UVA AI, including the Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, the Faculty of Data Science, and the Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology. Philborn, the founding dean of the Faculty of Data Science and former associate director of data science at the National Institutes of Health, said further development in the region would require elevating individuals with “AI and blood data” to diagrammatically develop the region's future development pathways, such as healthcare.
