Tom Niehaus is Executive Vice President, North America, at CTG.
The artificial intelligence revolution has arrived in healthcare, with the technology transforming everything from diagnostics to drug discovery to personalized treatments—processes largely unseen by the patient but which improve their lives.
Despite this positive impact, research shows there are ongoing concerns about the use of AI in healthcare generally. According to a Pew Research survey, 57% of Americans say the use of AI for clinical interactions, such as disease diagnosis and treatment recommendations, would make the patient-provider relationship worse.
This perception gap between the very real positive impact of AI in healthcare and the concerns about its effect on patient-provider trust must be addressed by healthcare organizations as they adopt more AI in both their clinical and administrative processes. They must help patients understand where and how AI is being used or risk diminishing that trust.
One area where patients are experiencing AI more directly is in interactions and engagement through technologies such as intelligent chatbots, like those that are increasingly integrated into patient portals.
This puts AI on the front lines with patients—challenging long-held beliefs and expectations about how they engage with their health providers. While there are many legitimate considerations in replacing human interactions with technology, there are also many ways that AI can strengthen today’s patient experience—and even bolster trust between providers and patients.
Consider a fictitious patient I’ll call Jennifer and the typical experiences she might have interacting with her healthcare provider but with the assistance of AI.
If Jennifer uses her patient portal to cancel an upcoming doctor’s appointment, for example, AI automatically flags her history of frequent cancellations or no-shows. Combined with Jennifer’s medical history, home address and other data, the AI identifies this as a potential transportation challenge and triggers an automated message that offers Jennifer local options, such as a link to Uber Health, an app that provides on-demand rides for patients who have transportation or communications challenges.
If there is no response or the issue is not resolved by Jennifer, the AI can also prompt a patient engagement representative to follow up for more personalized service, with Jennifer unaware that AI played a pivotal role in solving this issue.
Now that Jennifer has made it to her appointment, she still feels a bit uneasy. In the past, she believed her clinician had devoted more attention to capturing electronic notes than listening to her. Today is different. She has his undivided attention thanks to an AI-powered app that securely listens to their conversation, generates accurate clinical notes and, most importantly, allows the care provider to provide her with his full attention.
In a study of one such AI-powered system used at Stanford Medicine, 96% of providers said the technology was easy to use, 78% said it expedited clinical note-taking and about 66% observed that it saved them time. With clinicians reporting widespread feelings of burnout, as well as being overwhelmed with clerical duties, AI can dramatically improve the provider-patient relationship by reducing the time necessary for clinical documentation and allowing more time for providers to focus on delivering the care and attention that makes a difference in people’s lives.
After Jennifer’s examination, the clinician orders a prescription. AI then proactively identifies a potential medication adherence issue based on her electronic health records, such as missing or lagging prescription renewals. With this knowledge, Jennifer’s care team can speak with Jennifer about the cause of the non-adherence and help solve the challenge, whether it’s related to difficulty getting to a local drug store or needing automated daily reminders.
In isolation, none of these steps—arranging for transportation, reducing provider clerical duties, improving medication compliance—might seem remarkable. After all, resolving a patient transportation challenge is unlikely to make the headlines. However, in terms of impacting patient health and satisfaction, adding up all the seemingly “little” things can have a profound impact on every stakeholder in the healthcare system.
Though we are still in the early stages of deploying AI, virtual assistants are taking on more direct interactions with patients. They are becoming the first and sometimes primary mode for patients to engage with their providers as their capabilities become more intelligent and intuitive.
As evidence of this, a 2023 Journal of American Medical Association study compared the answers doctors provided to their patients against the answers that AI-powered chatbots provided and found chatbot responses to be more comprehensive and empathic than those provided by physicians.
While those results demonstrate just how far AI has come in mimicking human emotions like empathy, the study is also an important reminder to healthcare providers: AI adoption in healthcare is accelerating so fast that it’s difficult to properly assess its long-term impact on the doctor-patient relationship.
One thing is clear to me: To work effectively and become universally trusted in healthcare delivery, AI must make physicians better at their jobs—not replace them.
When it comes to building a trusted doctor-patient relationship, there is simply no replacement for human empathy, which AI can only mimic, not replace. Providers should focus on using AI to reduce or eliminate the mundane, time-consuming tasks from their day so they can focus on why they went into healthcare in the first place—to improve patients’ lives.
As providers continue to expand their use of AI, they must ensure seamless and trusted user experiences through:
• Continuous explainability, monitoring and optimization of the experience.
• Transparency in how AI is used to augment and improve human decision making.
• Clearly communicating data security and privacy measures.
How AI will impact direct patient interactions in the future remains to be seen, with success largely depending upon the outcomes it delivers, ease of use and, perhaps most importantly, the mutual trust that physicians and patients must have in these new technologies.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
