Iodine Software CEO talks about AI, hospitals, and demand for results | Data Book podcast

In building Iodine Software, William Chan says he wanted to try and solve some of the “administrative toil” of hospitals.

William Chan, CEO and co-founder of Iodine Software, is the latest guest on the Data Book podcast.

Chan is the CEO and co-founder of the AI company, which provides software solutions for hundreds of hospitals. He talks about AI, hospitals and more in the latest episode of Data Book, a podcast from Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“Hospitals are using clinicians to make decisions that are administrative in nature,” Chan says.

Iodine Software offers AI technology to improve clinical documentation accuracy, a key concern for hospitals.

“You want to ensure that the patient care is as high quality as it can be and accurate patient documentation ensures that,” Chan says. And he adds, “You want to make sure that the hospital is reimbursed accurately, based on the documentation.”

It’s a complex problem, and Chan says AI, in particular machine learning models, are well-suited to tackle it. “Throughout the years, we've been able to cultivate and hone that product to the point where it's now used by hundreds of hospitals throughout the country,” Chan says.

• Read more: Balancing excitement and caution with AI in healthcare

The company’s technology also helps hospitals with utilization management, to help evaluate if patients are in the right setting and ensuring providers use their resources effectively.

In the near future, Chan says AI is likely to have the biggest impact on hospitals and the healthcare industry by automating more business functions, thereby reducing hassles for doctors and nurses.

“I do think that that is indeed where, you know, AI can have the most, if you will, bang for the buck in a very short amount of time,” Chan says.

“Because there are a lot of these activities that are actually very well suited to artificial intelligence, generative AI, synthesizing, summarizing information, providing insights,” he continues. “They don't exclude the human from making the decision. They just help provide the information in a very succinct way so that the human, the clinician in this case, can make that decision, with the right information, a lot faster. So I think there's a lot that can be done very quickly. And, you know, hospitals can reap the rewards pretty quickly.”

• Read more: For now, AI’s biggest potential to improve healthcare isn’t the sexy stuff

At the same time, Chan says hospitals should evaluate AI tools to address specific needs, and not just because they are new.

“I think the smart money, the smart practitioners, are the ones who look at it and say, ‘I have this particular problem. Can I solve it with AI? And can you prove to me that you can solve it with AI?’ I think there's a lot of tire kicking. There's a lot of prototyping around AI right now. And there's a lot of ideas and a lot of vision. You know, the smart ones are the ones who are going around and say, ‘I get the vision of AI. But can you solve this specific problem?’”

Hospitals and health systems are also seeking a faster return on investment in new technologies than in the past, and Chan says that’s appropriate.

“They should be doing that,” Chan says. “They need to make sure that they are doing due diligence on the solution. They need to make sure that any solution that is technology that they're investing in, does have a return and it should be a quick return. I'd say, we're proud of the fact that we can deliver a return within a year. But solutions, technology solutions, should be able to do that.”

Chan also talks about his journey as a founder, the higher expectations of AI, and his advice for other healthcare leaders.