AI will boost workflow, workforce development and patient safety by 2025
Doctors and other employees in the healthcare chain are always looking for ways to improve workflow. Likewise, hospital and healthcare system leaders always want new ways to develop their workforce – the same people looking for a better workflow.
And all of these executives, healthcare providers and employees want to ensure that their organizations are operating at the highest levels of patient safety. Nothing is more important.
And it’s these three areas of healthcare that Stacey Caywood, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health, sees artificial intelligence boosting in 2025. She says these three areas – workflow, workforce development and patient safety – will benefit most this year from the application of various AI technologies.
At Wolters Kluwer Health, Caywood was responsible for leading a global company providing clinical technology and evidence-based systems that engage physicians, patients, researchers and students.
We spoke with Caywood to get a better understanding of her thoughts on AI in 2025.
Q. What will AI do for healthcare workflow in 2025?
A. In 2024, we saw the health tech sector begin to really focus the AI excitement of 2023 on tangible systems that make doctors’ workdays easier and more productive. Addressing the physician burnout epidemic has sharpened the focus of the strategies behind many AI health technologies coming to market in 2025.
According to the AMA it is almost half of American physicians report that they are suffering from burnout.
While the burnout epidemic may seem like a monolithic and systemic challenge, it is remarkable to see it being tackled from a wide range of angles.
Take, for example, transformative technology, such as a GenAI ambient listening writer, that dramatically reduces administrative burdens, including sometimes difficult documentation in the EHR and following up on large numbers of email messages.
In 2025, look for greater synergies and partnerships between AI and complementary technologies that serve as a force multiplier for AI’s potential to drive efficiencies in clinical workflow, provide relief from burnout, and deliver value to healthcare systems.
AI brings new levels of dynamic scale and speed to address many tasks and processes. This can introduce very different ways of thinking about how we use familiar clinical tools.
For example, more than three million physicians around the world use our clinical decision-making tool, UpToDate. What if we ‘unpack’ that evidence-based knowledge store and inject it seamlessly into the workflow?
AI can help deliver the right content at the right time key points in the clinical workflow so that physicians never lose their stride while using trusted knowledge and recommendations to treat patients. There is so much potential for these kinds of new synergies across resources and across the continuum.
2025 will be about building on the foundations of 2024 to really start unlocking the possibilities of AI, and reimagining how healthcare teams work and collaborate. We are excited about these types of collaborations that help us reframe our thinking about solving challenges at the point of care and in the background, in administrative processes.
And if we have happier, more satisfied doctors and patients, better staff retention and better outcomes, I call that a win.
Q. How will AI help in workforce development this year?
A. Amid workforce shortages, AI will help future physicians become practice-ready quickly by 2025. Nursing education tools are being completely redesigned to leverage the capabilities of AI.
For example, AI has the potential to improve nurses’ preparation for licensure so that students learn from mistakes with smarter, more personalized reinforcement.
Look for AI chatbots to transform virtual reality training by providing lifelike conversations with virtual patients. AI will also accelerate the development and adoption of changes in clinical practice, as hospital nursing leaders turn to AI to power the often cumbersome process of updating nursing practice protocols.
In 2025, link AI and virtual reality will dramatically change the way students, residents and researchers develop essential skills. This also applies to healthcare professionals who are just starting out in practice.
These immersive learning environments can be a reflection of what life will be like when they care for patients. Not only do they build clinical skills and develop clinical judgment, they can also work on interpersonal “soft” skills that are essential to high-quality care. This can help new nurses develop by easing some of the growing pains that new hires may face.
Q. And finally, you mention patient safety as a key area where AI should gain momentum by 2025. What do you mean?
A. AI health technology is largely focused on helping doctors. I would expect that scope to expand as AI plays a larger role in patient safety.
In 2025, look for AI technologies that dig deeper into live health data streams to identify often overlooked gaps in care that can impact patient safety. Imagine an AI helper app that works 24/7 in the background to identify instances where healthcare providers may miss a potential test or therapy for a patient or – worse – illegally withhold medications from patients, potentially causing harm causes.
One of the most convincing The applications of AI in the field of patient safety lie in its potential to combat medication errors and drug misuse. Consider an AI-powered application that works continuously in the background, monitoring for anomalies in prescribing or dispensing patterns.
This tool can identify suspicious activity, such as unusual prescribing habits or discrepancies in medication inventories, and alert administrators to potential diversions. Stopping drug abuse with AI is just one example of scaling AI across the system to fully improve patient safety.
AI can also give healthcare systems the ability to zoom out and scan analysis of safety measures at their sites. Look for predictive analytics, powered by AI, that can show how an organization is performing against healthcare benchmarks and identify emerging trends or anomalies so organizations can plan interventions and improvements.
Taken together, these systemic improvements in patient safety reflect a broader trend: AI is moving from a reactive force in healthcare to a proactive force. In the coming year, AI will play a new role in efforts to improve safety for patients and physicians.
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