Maria Shepherd, President and Founder, Medi-Vantage09.12.23
AI, digital health, and all its applications have dominated the headlines for more than five years. This has intensified since the launch of the world’s most familiar mode of AI—ChatGPT. A media frenzy and an accessible user interface have started bare knuckles competitions between tech goliaths and small disruptors to use the technology to solve many problems.
The U.S. healthcare system is tarnished by its high costs, complexities, and inefficiency; problems that many have tried to solve through a variety of methods for decades. Even Atul Gawande, M.D., author of the Checklist Manifesto1 (and a personal hero of mine) could not make Haven healthcare work, even with all the money and support of Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon behind him.
Our healthcare industry confronts new, unique, and pressing challenges today, including financial constraints revealed by COVID-19, healthcare provider shortages, and other concerns in the face of a surging demand for care. Some say these can be addressed by AI. According to McKinsey, there is $1 trillion of improvement capacity in the healthcare industry that AI can help unpack (Table 1).2
AI Workflow Solutions: Nebraska Medicine and Northwell Health are the most recent healthcare systems to deploy AI workflow technology from Laudio to improve retention, labor productivity, quality, service, and safety. The company’s solution automates repetitive work while providing best practices through daily recommendations to help clinical and operational staff.4
Enterprise Information Access: UNC Health is piloting a generative AI chatbot using the Azure OpenAI Service. The chatbot aims to simplify administrative work for healthcare team members by rapidly retrieving reference materials and documents.5
Hands-Free Charting: Carbon Health offers in-person and virtual care for easier everyday health to enable patients to create a direct relationship with an integrated team, monitor and manage their health, and access care when and where they need it. Its new hands-free charting solution is an AI-enabled notes assistant designed within its proprietary EHR software to be used across each of its clinics and providers. The technology is designed for current workflow and is efficient, generating a complete medical chart in <4 minutes as compared to an average of 16 minutes for a manual chart. It is accurate with 88% of the AI-generated text requiring no edits by the healthcare provider, and complete with charts that are 2.5 times more detailed than manual entries.6
AI is also being utilized by healthcare facilities to improve the patient’s experience while helping hospitals manage their operational costs by tracking patient wait times and reducing inpatient and emergency department length of stay. Other AI platforms automate and prioritize patient safety.
Demand from surgeons after a long, initial reluctance to embrace robots in their practices has grown. Some surgeons are still reluctant to use robots, fearing a loss of skills and lack of trust in the algorithms, but analysts in the orthopedic space predict that when robots penetrate surgical procedure rates by 35%, surgeons will adopt them for routine use.8 In orthopedics, some surgeries are close to this level of utilization. For example, 33% of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) members report they are using robotic assistants for total knee arthroplasty.8
Patients like technology and trust robots. Anecdotally, a friend of mine had to have a prostatectomy (sadly, someone so young), but the bright note for him was the surgery was being performed by a robot, which he felt would increase his chances for a favorable outcome.
The challenges for the AI robotics surgery market are the same as for the overall use of surgical robotics. Many hospital budgets face the same restrictions they have since we came out of COVID-19, and our clients have asked us to help with developing strategies to address this. Further, in our hospital administrator strategy research, we realized supply chain disruptions still exist.
References
Maria Shepherd has more than 20 years of experience in marketing in small startups and top-tier companies. She founded Medi-Vantage, which provides marketing and business strategy for the medtech industry. She can be reached at mshepherd@medi-vantage.com.
Why Is This Important?
Many healthcare providers are applying ChatGPT (or similar offerings) to clinical applications. Often, speakers at medtech meetings say one of the best sources for new clinical applications on care delivery is in current non-clinical applications of digital health or AI that offer auspicious solutions to the most pressing issues in healthcare today.The U.S. healthcare system is tarnished by its high costs, complexities, and inefficiency; problems that many have tried to solve through a variety of methods for decades. Even Atul Gawande, M.D., author of the Checklist Manifesto1 (and a personal hero of mine) could not make Haven healthcare work, even with all the money and support of Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon behind him.
Our healthcare industry confronts new, unique, and pressing challenges today, including financial constraints revealed by COVID-19, healthcare provider shortages, and other concerns in the face of a surging demand for care. Some say these can be addressed by AI. According to McKinsey, there is $1 trillion of improvement capacity in the healthcare industry that AI can help unpack (Table 1).2
AI in the Global Healthcare Market
The combination of opportunity and urgency produce a persuasive case for the prioritization of non-clinical AI healthcare applications as demonstrated by recent activity across the industry.AI Workflow Solutions: Nebraska Medicine and Northwell Health are the most recent healthcare systems to deploy AI workflow technology from Laudio to improve retention, labor productivity, quality, service, and safety. The company’s solution automates repetitive work while providing best practices through daily recommendations to help clinical and operational staff.4
Enterprise Information Access: UNC Health is piloting a generative AI chatbot using the Azure OpenAI Service. The chatbot aims to simplify administrative work for healthcare team members by rapidly retrieving reference materials and documents.5
Hands-Free Charting: Carbon Health offers in-person and virtual care for easier everyday health to enable patients to create a direct relationship with an integrated team, monitor and manage their health, and access care when and where they need it. Its new hands-free charting solution is an AI-enabled notes assistant designed within its proprietary EHR software to be used across each of its clinics and providers. The technology is designed for current workflow and is efficient, generating a complete medical chart in <4 minutes as compared to an average of 16 minutes for a manual chart. It is accurate with 88% of the AI-generated text requiring no edits by the healthcare provider, and complete with charts that are 2.5 times more detailed than manual entries.6
AI in Medical Devices
There are multiple uses for AI in the medtech industry, such as remote surgery, data management, clinical trials, diagnostic and procedural assisting, and more. AI can also improve medtech manufacturing efficiencies and reduce risk through machine learning. Combined with automation, this increases manufacturing productivity and may reduce the occurrence of human error.AI is also being utilized by healthcare facilities to improve the patient’s experience while helping hospitals manage their operational costs by tracking patient wait times and reducing inpatient and emergency department length of stay. Other AI platforms automate and prioritize patient safety.
Example of AI in Surgery
Robotics is a perfect example of how AI has integrated itself into the medtech space. Surgeons are facing all the challenges previously mentioned, which creates demand for new surgical tools, including new types of robots.7 With increasing numbers of aging patients, demand is growing for greater efficiencies at providers who encourage medtech startups to create new solutions to meet unmet needs. Hospital administrators are watching because they see robots as a way to eliminate error and improve surgical outcomes. However, now hospitals have higher expectations for robotic solutions that are affordable, ergonomic, and possibly autonomous, which is what AI in robotics surgery can provide.Demand from surgeons after a long, initial reluctance to embrace robots in their practices has grown. Some surgeons are still reluctant to use robots, fearing a loss of skills and lack of trust in the algorithms, but analysts in the orthopedic space predict that when robots penetrate surgical procedure rates by 35%, surgeons will adopt them for routine use.8 In orthopedics, some surgeries are close to this level of utilization. For example, 33% of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) members report they are using robotic assistants for total knee arthroplasty.8
Patients like technology and trust robots. Anecdotally, a friend of mine had to have a prostatectomy (sadly, someone so young), but the bright note for him was the surgery was being performed by a robot, which he felt would increase his chances for a favorable outcome.
The challenges for the AI robotics surgery market are the same as for the overall use of surgical robotics. Many hospital budgets face the same restrictions they have since we came out of COVID-19, and our clients have asked us to help with developing strategies to address this. Further, in our hospital administrator strategy research, we realized supply chain disruptions still exist.
The Medi-Vantage Perspective
AI in all medical devices, including orthopedic surgical robotics, is experiencing a dramatic shift. Ensure your AI strategy and the product it yields is flexible, autonomous, and multi-functional. If you want to understand the full range of your orthopedic surgeons’ needs, voice of the customer is still a highly beneficial tool for uncovering those unmet needs to allow you to develop that multi-functional product your target end-user needs.References
- amzn.to/45yy4sy
- mck.co/3Z50t7m
- bit.ly/odt230903
- bwnews.pr/3EigE7s
- bit.ly/odt230905
- bit.ly/odt230906
- bit.ly/odt230907
- bit.ly/odt230908
Maria Shepherd has more than 20 years of experience in marketing in small startups and top-tier companies. She founded Medi-Vantage, which provides marketing and business strategy for the medtech industry. She can be reached at mshepherd@medi-vantage.com.