Sutter Health, one of the largest healthcare providers in Northern California, has partnered with Abridge, a healthcare AI startup focused on clinical documentation, to offer the service to physicians and physicians across the state.
The goal of the technology is to reduce the time it takes for medical professionals to perform administrative tasks, including writing clinical notes.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
The Abridge AI platform is tailor-made for medical conversations and is supported by electronic healthcare record integrations, which convert conversations between patients and physicians into structured clinical notes in real-time.
The AI-generated summaries are mapped using Linked Evidence technology to ensure accuracy.
Sutter’s collaboration with Abridge will also result in the integration of patient-oriented summaries into the EHR.
Following successful implementations at Yale New Haven Health System, UCI Health, Emory Healthcare, The University of Kansas Health System, UPMC and numerous other healthcare systems, Abridge also secured $150 million in Series C financing.
That included a strategic investment from NVIDIA to accelerate their research and development agenda and scale the clinical conversation platform across the broader US healthcare system.
Abridge leverages NVIDIA’s latest NIM inference microservices, integrated into the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform and built on the company’s large language model TensorRT to power its deep learning stack.
THE BIG TREND
Since 2018, healthcare burnout rates have increased, although they began to stabilize in late 2022, according to a January report from KLAS.
The use of AI and generative AI (GenAI) could help reduce the growing rate of burnout among healthcare professionals.
Some experts have posited that an AI tool that can, for example, generate a first draft of a SOAP note, which must then be approved or edited by the healthcare provider, could significantly reduce physicians’ workload, saving them significant time.
In an interview with HealthcareITNews in August 2023, Abridge founder and CEO Dr. Shiv Rao that AI-powered automation could have a huge impact on the demands of manual documentation and coding.
“If we could provide much higher speed and lower costs, and convert patient conversations into highly professional notes with quality and accuracy, we could refocus our profession on what matters most: being present and listening,” he said.
Trained on massive data sets, GenAI holds great promise in the field of data-rich healthcare – an October 2023 report predicted that the healthcare technology alone would grow into a $22 billion industry by 2032.
This growth would be fueled by the formation of strategic partnerships among a growing number of companies that integrate solutions in drug discovery, diagnostics, patient care and claims management.
Earlier this month, NVIDIA launched 25 new GenAI microservices targeted at various healthcare applications, facilitating the integration of AI into both cloud-based and on-premises systems focused on genomics, imaging, drug discovery and other digital healthcare needs.
Oracle also introduced a genAI tool and additional enhancements to its Data Intelligence Cloud Suite, strengthening Oracle Health Data Intelligence with performance improvements, pre-built clinical quality analytics, and automated alerts to improve reimbursement and quality of care.
ON THE RECORD
“We want to support our physicians so that they can serve our patients sustainably,” says Dr. Albert Chan, Chief Health Information Officer of Sutter Health, said in a statement about the new genAI work. “Reducing administrative burden by two to three hours per day with Abridge can reduce the time our physicians have historically spent away from their families and help our caregivers recharge and be the best versions of themselves in caring for patients.”
Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.
Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com
Twitter: @dropdeaded209