AI Overview: Emerging Applications for Clinical Documentation, Patient Access, and Cybersecurity

This week, AI applications continue to infuse healthcare, with new use cases and implementations of all shapes and sizes. AI is streamlining documentation at Federally Qualified Health Centers, helping expand access to effective mental health care, and enabling secure digital transformation, to name just three.

FHQCs, CHCs using speech AI

Utah Navajo Health System, CenterPlace Health, Access Health Louisiana and PrimeCare Health are reducing their clinical and operational documentation burdens by remotely taking notes, coding, dictating and more, according to an announcement Thursday from Suki, a voice-activated AI assistant for healthcare.

According to the company, more than 250 U.S. health systems and clinics have reduced their documentation workload by an average of 72% and their pajama time by nearly six hours.

“Suki is a game changer for my personal mental health,” said Dr. Leslie McNaughtan, a family medicine specialist at UNHS Utah, a designated Community Health Center that provides medical, dental and behavioral health care in the Navajo Nation and southeastern Utah, in a statement released by the provider.

Suki also said it can yield nine times more return on investment in one year and is a significant benefit for government-recognized health centers and CHCs with limited resources.

McNaughtan says she has complex patients and many are late for their appointments. This impacts her workflow and often causes her to focus less on the patients and more on the nearest computer terminal.

“Suki has lightened my administrative burden so much that I feel like I can continue my work as a doctor,” she said.

Last month, Suki also announced that its self-updating environmental voice documentation software, which integrates with numerous electronic health records including Epic, Oracle Cerner, athenahealth, Meditech and others, is now available implemented via APIs by pasting code.

NLP for Mental Health

Mpathic, a provider of actionable conversation analytics that it claims can improve healthcare behavior, announced it has received a Small Business Innovation Research award from the National Institutes of Health to test AI and natural language processing to analyze transcripts of provider-patient appointments in Wave’s AI model.

Using AI and NLP to analyze Wave conversation data from 300 half-hour health coaching sessions, it can improve cultural alignment in provider-patient interactions, the company said in a July 11 statement.

According to mpathic’s project abstractMarginalized communities are also less likely to seek treatment, find or access quality care, and complete treatment.

With the project, “Empathy for All: Generative AI that Improves Patient-Caregiver Cultural Alignment in Real Time,” the Bellevue, Washington-based company aims to use AI to:

• Promote cultural alignment between healthcare providers and patients.
• Bridging the gap in mental health care for underserved populations of diverse races and ethnicities.
• Improve therapeutic outcomes and patient satisfaction.

“Our collaboration with mpathic on this project is not just about technological innovation; it is a step toward real access to mental health care that recognizes and adapts to the diversity of human culture,” said Dr. Sarah Adler, founder and CEO of Wave, in the subsidy announcement.

“It’s about creating tools that allow us to better see each patient and approach them where they are, with respect, humility and understanding.”

According to the NIH website, mpathic received $219,212 in funding from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct the research.

Secure-by-design certificates

TruCare, a value-based care platform for payers, providers and public health organizations that leverages generative AI in population health management tools, announced July 9 that it has achieved HITRUST Risk-Based, 2-year certification. The company has also achieved SOC 2 compliance.

Last week, 1upHealth announced that its proprietary Fast Health Interoperability Resources data aggregation platform received one-year HITRUST certification to manage data protection and mitigate cybersecurity threats.

While open standards-based data formats and technologies can be leveraged in the cloud, they are “often hampered by an unstable environment characterized by intensive merger and acquisition activity,” Pieter De Leenheer, the company’s chief technology officer, said in a company press release. blog post about HIMSS24.

To defend against cybersecurity threats in healthcare, federal agencies and healthcare data security advisors are urging underprepared providers to improve the security of their IT infrastructure and ensure their business partners meet standards.

“1upHealth’s HITRUST i1 certification proves that they are at the forefront of industry best practices for information risk management and cybersecurity,” said Jeremy Huval, HITRUST Chief Innovation Officer, in a July 11 statement.

Also symplr, which offers software for corporate healthcare and Collaborate with Amazon Web Services to develop machine learning capabilities, said it has effectively obtained SOC 2 for 29 of its products, validating HIPAA requirements for security and privacy risks.

“While we recognize there are inherent risks, we are taking proactive measures to strengthen and continually improve our security protocols,” said Saeed Valian, symplr’s Chief Information Security Officer, in a July 11 statement.

The company also said that its CEO, BJ Schaknowski, has also signed the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Secure by Design initiative.

“Our Secure by Design promise, SOC 2 certifications, and HITRUST recertification for symplr solutions underscore our commitment to preventing and protecting against future threats by securing sensitive data. We recognize that healthcare systems cannot afford disruption,” Valian added.

In addition to the commitment to transparent development, CISA’s awareness campaign also includes scrutiny of AI software development practices in an educational alert series designed to spur the industry to develop safer products.

Andrea Fox is Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email address: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

The HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum will take place September 5-6 in Boston. More information and registration.

The HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum will take place September 5-6 in Boston. More information and registration.