Healthcare is firmly past the question of whether artificial intelligence will play a role in the industry or not. AI is already supporting healthcare organizations in various tasks, including documentation, workflow automation, and analytics. The bigger question is what organizations do with the capacity AI creates.
The next phase of healthcare AI doesn’t necessarily involve a more advanced model or another new tool. It may involve helping healthcare professionals spend more time interacting with patients and doing the work that requires their expertise.
AI can process information and reduce the amount of time you spend on redundant work. However, you and your team are the ones responsible for building trust and making connections that set the stage for better patient outcomes.
AI Should Give Healthcare Professionals More Time
Healthcare professionals have too much to do and not enough hours in the day. They often spend, or waste, valuable time on administrative tasks that do not require their highest level of expertise. These tasks include reviewing charts, scheduling, sending messages, and completing documentation. All of this repetitive work pulls them away from patients.
AI can help change that. In a 2024 survey, 57% of physicians identified “reducing administrative burden through automation” as the top opportunity for artificial intelligence in healthcare. Over two-thirds of physicians advised that they see a definite advantage to using AI tools, which represented an increase from 2023.
Whether you are already using AI or exploring new ways to implement it, focus on giving your providers more of their days back. The more time they can devote to patients, the better.
Put People at the Top of Their Roles
Healthcare organizations invest heavily in people with specialized education and training. When those individuals are spending large portions of their day on tasks that do not require their highest level of expertise, everyone pays the price.
AI gives you a chance to change that. Don’t look at what jobs AI can replace. Instead, identify work that AI can remove so that your people can do more of what only they can do.
AI can summarize information and identify patterns. It can also automate routine tasks and draft communications. Healthcare professionals can apply clinical judgment and use their experience to deliver better outcomes for patients.
Healthcare Runs on Relationships
Automating relationship-building will backfire. You need people forging and nurturing relationships with your patient population. When patients trust providers and other clinical staff, they are more likely to voice their concerns and follow through with treatment recommendations. Improved adherence can lead to better outcomes and reduced readmission rates.
Technology does not create relationships. It helps your team members show up and be present when it matters most.
AI Can Strengthen Human Connection
The most valuable healthcare AI applications may ultimately involve the moments when technology gets out of the way. For example, an AI scribe reduces the amount of time a provider spends typing during or after a patient visit. The physician can redirect some of that time and attention toward the patient.
When a provider can give a patient their full attention, it changes the quality of an interaction. Technology, and specifically artificial intelligence, excels at removing friction from patient visits. It removes layers of work, rather than creating more tasks for providers to complete.
The Competitive Advantage Will Come From People
AI is more accessible, especially in the healthcare space. If everyone has artificial intelligence, you’ll need to rely on your team members to set your organization apart from the competition. That’s the real source of your advantage. Use AI to support and magnify the team of experts that you’ve brought together.
Make People the Point of Healthcare AI
Artificial intelligence in healthcare is rapidly becoming more advanced and sophisticated. Now is the ideal time to focus on harnessing the value of your current team and building on their expertise rather than jumping at the “next big thing” in AI.
People serving people. That’s what healthcare is, and will continue to be, all about.
