Hospitals want tangible results from AI

Over the past year or so, Brent Dover says he’s seen a significant shift regarding conversations about artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry.

Dover, the CEO of Carta Healthcare, talked about the use of AI in healthcare on the latest episode of Data Book, a podcast from Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“There are many, many use cases that are truly working, and they're delivering really tangible benefits to providers,” Dover says. “I think the big thing that we're past is maybe the idea of: Should AI be something that we are serious about? And I'm telling you, like, nine to 12 months ago, there was still just a lot of question marks about all of that.”

Now, he says, healthcare leaders are asking tech companies for “tangible, deliverable results that can make an impact in our healthcare system.”

“We've really gotten down to kind of use cases, as opposed to super high level strategy,” he says. “And I think that's helpful.”

Carta Healthcare works with hospitals and health systems and uses AI tools to save time and improve accuracy in clinical data abstraction.

But Dover says the company also employs hundreds of clinical data abstractors, pairing people with AI technology to get better results. He calls the approach “hybrid intelligence.”

Dover says he understands why some healthcare leaders are viewing AI with a degree of caution.

“Accuracy has to be substantial,” he says. “Especially as we move closer and closer to clinical content, we just can't get it wrong. There's no room for it. And hey, a year ago, it was a little bit of the Wild West.”

Dover says hospitals and health systems are looking at more robust governance structures examining AI applications.

“There's just new things that had to kind of be put in place for healthcare systems to get serious about this, and vendors had to respond to all of that,” he says. “And I think it's happened really quickly for healthcare, but we're making a lot of really forward progress, at least through the lens that I see in the marketplace.”

Health systems are moving faster in how they evaluate AI solutions from technology companies, and they are looking for faster returns, Dover says. Hospitals are less interested in adopting novel AI tools that aren’t aimed at specific problems.

Now, hospitals have different expectations of vendors, and they aren’t looking to wait years to determine if the investment is worthwhile, he says. Hospitals want to see productivity gains and AI solutions that reduce the workload of their staff.

As Dover says, the message from hospitals is that “we need the ROI now. We need the productivity gains now. We need the impact on patient care now. And so that's why I think the solutions are winning out, not the theories.”

Dover says he expects to see AI tools helping doctors, but he doesn’t see physicians being replaced. In the future, he says AI will help doctors do their best for their patients.

“I want to go talk to my doctor,” Dover says. “I want them to have all this information, right? I see my doctors overwhelmed with all the information they have to sort through. I love the idea of clinically validated AI tools summarizing a lot about my condition, and then helping those clinicians kind of just fight through the huge amount of data that they have to understand, but then still apply their personal judgment and reasoning. That feels like the sweet spot to me,” he says.

Check out the full conversation for more about how hospitals are viewing AI in healthcare, where AI is heading, and interesting thoughts on leadership and getting the best out of staff.

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