In its latest report titled the “State of AI During the Great Burnout in Healthcare,” big data unicorn Innovaccer details the progress and current state of affairs with regards to artificial intelligence and its astoundingly rapid growth in healthcare. The report seeks to primarily educate and explores AI as a tool to improve efficiency, a means to enable significant time and cost savings in clinical settings, and additionally, foster a discussion about the opportunities and insights that can assist innovators in pushing forward development.
To do so, Innovaccer developed the study by surveying nearly 568 professionals employed in healthcare settings across 368 organizations, and the results spoke for themselves; respondents were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the adoption of AI in healthcare. Specifically, nearly 82% of respondents indicated that AI has become important to their operations; 67% indicated that they would like AI to reduce their burnout, and 87% of respondents who have not previously used AI indicated their interest in exploring use cases to potentially find ways to reduce clinical burnout.
In the context of a rapidly shifting healthcare landscape where clinicians are increasingly faced with escalating levels of burnout, these results make complete sense. An American Medical Association study published in 2022 found that rates of burnout have been at all-time highs in recent years for physicians. This burnout has also been a significant source of attrition for healthcare workers in general, leading to numerous shortages globally and a thoroughly unstable healthcare workforce. Moreover, auxiliary industries have taken advantage of this phenomenon and have lured physicians to non-traditional and non-clinical careers; for example, many physicians have turned to lucrative opportunities in the technology, pharmaceutical and advisory services industries as a means to better monetize and expand their skills and knowledge bases.
The Innovaccer report itself confirms much of the same; according to its findings, nearly 1/3 of healthcare workers report burnout symptoms, and approximately 64% cite that they are overworked. The data certainly does not paint a promising picture for the future of the healthcare workforce.
Fortunately, the rapid work with artificial intelligence for clinical settings is paving the way for potential respite.
Innovaccer itself is a pioneer in the field and has reached “unicorn status” for how deeply it has been able to embed its work with healthcare organizations globally. From population health management to organizational maturity assessments and advanced analytics, the firm has grown rapidly and competes with some of the most prominent big data analytics players in the field; in fact, in its latest funding discussion earlier this year, the company was reportedly valued at nearly $2.5-$3.2 billion.
Undoubtedly, the competition is stiff, and other large technology companies are also heavily leaning into this arena and introducing new tools and AI platforms to solve the big data problem in healthcare. Take for example Google’s Vertex AI platform, which provides physicians/employees with a means to query their organization’s own data to generate an answer based on a user’s query, and even cites the exact source for the answer so that users can refer back to the primary documentation. Given the numerous data sources that providers are plagued with on a day-to-day basis, this can provide significant benefits if executed correctly. Other technology companies are addressing real-time workflow challenges, such as with ambient dictation tools. By leveraging artificial intelligence, these tools are making it possible for physicians to reduce the time spent with documentation and administrative tasks and can significantly increase their workflow efficiency.
But there is still a lot of work to be done. In an exclusive interview with Forbes, Abhinav Shashank, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovaccer, remains optimistic about the field and explains how AI can truly make a difference in healthcare… “not only for the providers that are facing burnout, but also for the day-to-day patients.” Shashank enthusiastically explains that if artificial intelligence can significantly improve efficiencies and workflow burdens for physicians, hopefully, that can translate to physicians spending time where it is needed the most— with patients to better improve access to care. Nevertheless, he maintains a practical outlook on the matter and explains that this space will undoubtedly take time to mature and truly add value in a meaningful way. On the topic of how the market is rapidly getting flooded with numerous players, he explains that eventually, super-specialists will likely emerge in this intersection of AI, healthcare and data— those that can perfect the platformization of these tools and ultimately, provide curated and bespoke services to organizations.
This optimism and the drive for innovation globally is what is ultimately fueling the incredible momentum around artificial intelligence and its potential use cases for healthcare. Time will tell which products and players will survive market forces and truly be able to create a lasting impact for patient care and outcomes.
