As technology innovators use artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes and experiences, they are also finding ways to cut the red tape that typically slows down healthcare, according to many announcements this week.
Northwestern Medicine, Nevada Health Link, Cohere Health and Kyruus Health are teaming up with Dell Technologies, Google Cloud Marketplace and others to provide providers and payers with ways to address the daily challenges that delay care approval and prevent patients from seeking care and enroll in health plans.
Dell and Northwestern are further bringing AI into hospital workflows
Dell Technologies and Northwestern Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine aim to develop and integrate generative multimodal large language models into hospital workflows to improve patient care and reduce physician burnout, according to an announcement Friday from Dell.
While the collaboration aims to apply mlLMs across multiple domains, from still image viewing, video and waveform viewing to predictive models for electronic health records, the partners will further develop and evaluate a generative model to aid in interpreting chest x-rays.
Northwestern Medicine previously partnered with Dell’s AI Innovation Lab to train a multimodal LLM that produced draft X-ray reports that could support physician decision-making.
In October, Northwestern researchers published a JAMA paper to their study that looked at how genAI could improve the timeliness of chest radiography interpretation by emergency room physicians. They took 500 emergency department chest x-rays from 500 unique patients through an AI model, finding that it produced reports with comparable clinical accuracy and textual quality to radiology reports, while providing higher text quality than teleradiology reports.
“Technology like AI has the power to accelerate innovation that drives human progress. Healthcare is a great example of where technology can have an impact and help save lives,” said Jeff Boudreau, Chief AI Officer at Dell Technologies in the statement.
“In healthcare, there is little to no room for error and an enormous amount of good that can be done,” added Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, medical director of advanced technologies at Northwestern Medicine, added. “When we think about what AI can do, we see not only the technology itself, but also the many patients and lives it will positively impact.”
Nevada Health Link launches AI virtual agent
Nevada Health Link announced Wednesday that it has successfully integrated AI into its state-based marketplace platform to help expand its call center and provide more service during peak hours.
The first-of-its-kind virtual agent, powered by partnership with GetInsured, uses natural language prompts to answer common questions and requests 24/7, including password resets, enrollment assistance and more.
During open enrollment for the 2024 plan year, the AI agent handled 14.5% of call center demand, approximately 2,700 calls. It also transferred an additional 9.6% of calls to affiliated brokers or Nevada Medicaid – approximately 2,100 additional calls.
According to the health information exchange, the virtual agent allowed HIE frontline workers to focus on more complex tasks while reducing the time a customer had to wait for specialized services.
“Given the prevalence of gig workers and individuals with unconventional work schedules in Nevada’s diverse workforce, the integration of AI into the Nevada Health Link platform ensures essential support is available 24 hours a day,” said Russell Cook, Executive Director of Nevada Health Link, said in a statement.
It is the first exchange marketplace to receive approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service for an AI-based virtual customer service agent that ensures privacy and security requirements are met, the HIE said, and its use has contributed to the second largest enrollment in state market history.
The initiative demonstrates a “commitment to excellence in leveraging technology to meet the changing needs of Nevadans,” said Tim Galluzi, the state’s chief information officer.
Cohere Health continues ‘last mile’ with AI integration in Epic
To advance clinical intelligence and accelerate prior authorization requests, a new AI-powered prior authorization integration in Epic will enable healthcare providers across the country to submit directly into their EHR workflows, Cohere Health announced on 3 announced in April.
“Our integration with Payer Platform is a huge step towards a truly end-to-end contactless authorization process,” said Dr. Brian Covino, Chief Medical Officer of Cohere Health, said in a statement.
“Initiating authorization requests directly from EHRs is the ‘final step’ toward full automation and significantly reduces provider staff time for authorization by automating request initiation.”
The company noted that it processes 5.5 million prior authorization requests annually, using predictive modeling and proactive decision support to accelerate healthcare approvals and reduce administrative costs.
Kyruus Health scales with Google Cloud
Kyruus Connect for Payers, which provides data and compliance services to 100 national and regional health insurance brands and streamlines patient engagement capabilities, is now available through the Google Cloud Marketplace, according to an April 3 announcement.
The company said it offers cost transparency tools that guide plan participants through care choices, encouraging their willingness to seek care. Cloud marketplace access can help health plans quickly deploy, manage and grow their cost transparency and patient engagement tools.
“By partnering with Google Cloud, we can further scale our healthcare access platform, reach a broader range of care plans while streamlining processes,” said Gail Airasian, Chief Strategy Officer of Kyruus Health, in a statement.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.