Key Takeaways
- Discussions around AI are dominating tech innovation in healthcare.
- Leaders are looking to put consumers at the heart of improvements.
- Regulation and caution are important but shouldn’t get in the way of progress.
Innovation in healthcare requires a balancing act between enthusiasm and thoughtfulness, industry leaders say.
In a U.S. News Healthcare of Tomorrow conference panel discussion titled “Tech-Enabled Innovation in Uncertain Times,” speakers discussed the importance of leveraging new technologies in ethical and systematic ways to advance healthcare productively.
The Artificial Intelligence Question
AI augmentation, with its ability to fill the capacity gaps in many healthcare systems, is transformative, said Daryl Tol, president and CEO of Health Assurance Transformation Company.
“This is where AI, of course, is very exciting, because now we have this augmentation capability that can connect to doctors and nurses and brilliantly trained people, not replace them … but actually spread their capacity to do the work we needed to do for decades,” Tol said.
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Hospitals, however, need to temper that excitement with asking ethical questions in implementation, noted Baligh Yehia, president of Jefferson Health.
“[Patients] are hungry to be able to access healthcare and health information in a different way,” Yehia said. “So we have to meet them where they are, but at the same time grapple with what does it mean if AI can practice as a nurse … and what are the guardrails around that if something goes wrong in those scenarios?”
Bettering Consumer Experiences
Healthcare innovations should center around patient experience.
“The consumer is the human being, not the doctor, not the payer, not the employer, but the human being. And we’ve defined that very, very clearly, so we don’t have to have those internal debates,” Tol said. “The consumer is the human being receiving the product.”
For David Callender, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System, positive change comes from thinking about patients’ perspectives.
“The solution is going at it from the position of how a customer, patient, consumer really thinks about what they need, and then guiding them to the solutions,” he said.
Regulations vs. Innovation
A patient-first healthcare model is only one part of the calculation for using AI effectively.
Tej Daruwalla, executive vice president of data solutions and analytics for BPD Healthcare, said many healthcare regulations take the industry “two steps forward, one step back.”
“We need some modern regulations that can govern more responsible AI, but we really need some of those regulations to go away that are antiquated and kind of holding this industry back for innovation,” Daruwalla added.
The simple solution is to meet with policymakers to demystify innovations, Callender said.
“I think that what we have to do is what we’ve always done, which is engage with policymakers and help them understand what we’re doing,” he pointed out.
