As burnout among healthcare workers continues to be a major concern, the use of artificial intelligence, EHRs and other automation tools may be able to have a positive impact on hospitals and health systems. When it comes to artificial intelligence, some legal issues arise. That's why we interviewed Carly Koza, an authority on this topic and Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney associate. Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney is a national law firm with 450 attorneys and government relations professionals across 15 offices representing companies including 50 of the Fortune 100. Koza discusses what healthcare provider organizations should prepare for when it comes to growing AI implementation, how AI can help combat increasing demands on healthcare workers, ways AI can help healthcare provider organizations ensure quality patient care, and legal matters that arise from these issues.

Healthcare is jam-packed with complex data stored in multiple places and evolving every day. That makes it a great target for the form of artificial intelligence known as machine learning. Oxford defines machine learning as "the use and development of computer systems that are able to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyze and draw inferences from patterns in data." In recent years, machine learning already has proven useful in diagnosis and can help with the efficiency of medical coding. But there are many other places where machine learning can be useful but has yet to make headway.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to advance healthcare and accelerate life sciences research. And there are many companies on the market today with AI offerings to do just that. Derek Baird is president of North America at Sensyne Health, which offers AI-based remote patient monitoring for healthcare provider organizations and helps life sciences companies develop new medicines. Baird believes some large companies have missed the mark on AI and ultimately dismantled public trust in these types of technologies, but that some companies have cracked the code by starting with the basics. He also believes AI success hinges on solving non-glamorous issues like data normalization, interoperability, clinical workflow integration and change management.

New research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that chatbots and other conversational agents can be used to provide up-to-date facts about COVID-19. Researchers from IBM Watson Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center explored the ways governmental agencies, employers, provider organizations and health plans used the Watson Assistant platform to deliver COVID-19-related information to users. "Given the enormous demand for information about COVID-19, many stakeholders have leveraged emerging conversational technologies to automate responses to common COVID-19 related questions and information needs specific to their organizations," wrote the team. As the researchers noted, chatbots have been used in healthcare to aid in performing specific tasks, determining social needs, and prompting behavior change. But in response to the rapidly evolving information – and disinformation – landscape around the novel coronavirus throughout 2020, many organizations turned to natural language processing tools as part of public-awareness strategies.

As healthcare provider organizations confront the steep challenge of securely and efficiently bridging the digital gaps among various technology systems, many are looking to cloud technologies that empower interoperability, marry healthcare information systems with AI, and ensure the privacy and security of patient data. With this in mind, Healthcare IT News turned to Concord Technologies, a cloud fax and document process automation company (it will be in booth 634 at HIMSS20 in March), to look ahead at 2020 and identify three trends with AI-based cloud fax technology. The CAQH Index shows a $9.8 billion savings opportunity for the healthcare industry by reducing the administrative burden found in eligibility and benefit verification, prior authorization, claim submission, coordination of benefits or a crossover claim, claim status inquiry, claim payment, and remittance advice. CAQH is a non-profit alliance of health plans and trade associations developing and leading initiatives designed to positively impact the business of healthcare. In 2020, AI-enabled technologies will transform administrative workflows across digital channels, reducing administrator and clinician burnout and improving overall staff satisfaction, said John Harrison, senior vice president at Concord Technologies.

One of the relatively unsung benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) is that it can power companies whose business models are multi-sided platforms. That's the primary reason why there are massive numbers of AI applications at Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb and Google--you can't run a platform business without AI. The technology is critical for making the match between buyers and sellers, for knowing who's buying and selling what and for servicing large numbers of customers. Firms whose business models were not previously platform-based are noticing that they are an effective route to faster growth and higher valuations. This gives rise to the "platform pivot"--changing the primary business model to a platform, or at least adding it to existing business models.

Artificial intelligence is a highly complex technology that, once implemented, requires ongoing oversight to make sure it is doing what is expected of it and ensure it is operating at optimal levels. Healthcare provider organizations using AI technologies also need to make sure they're getting the biggest bang for their buck. In other words, they need to optimize the AI so that the technologies are meeting the specific needs of their organizations. We spoke with six artificial intelligence experts, each with extensive experience in healthcare deployments, who offered comprehensive advice on how CIOs and other health IT workers can optimize their AI systems and approaches to best work for their provider organizations. Optimizing AI depends on the understanding of what AI is capable of and applying it to the right problem, said Joe Petro, chief technology officer at Nuance Communications, a vendor of AI technology for medical image interpretations.

Healthcare organizations across the country are beginning to cash in on early efforts in artificial intelligence and data visualization. First reports on initial efforts to use these advanced technologies show tantalizing potential. Indeed, these clinical applications of AI and data visualization are where most healthcare organizations are concentrating early efforts in using this advanced assistive and predictive technology, according to results of a recent poll of Health Data Management readers. More than half (53 percent) of respondents to the survey say their organizations are using these advanced analytic technologies to improve clinical decision making. That's far and away the leading use of this information technology, but a range of other applications are being implemented, respondents say.

Here's a quick question--what do artificial intelligence, virtual health, digital consumer engagement, and value-based contracting all have in common? The answer--all of them require interoperability for realizing a return-on-investment (ROI). Unfortunately, the state of interoperability in the system serving consumers with complex needs is not great. The gap between where most provider organizations are and where they need to go is still large. So, what exactly is interoperability?

Healthcare is in the midst of a financial shift: value-based care is rising to the fore and hospitals simply have to share more of the financial risk. That means financial information systems must adapt to the new environment. Experts in financial IT have a wide variety of ideas on where the next generation of features and functions will manifest. There are three major features healthcare CIOs need to pay attention to in their planning for next-generation financial management tools: visualization, artificial intelligence and blockchain, all delivered via cloud services, said John Moore, founder and managing partner at health IT consultancy Chilmark Research. "Visualization may be argued as not exactly next generation in many sectors of the economy but the slow pace of IT adoption in healthcare puts this on the list," Moore said.