Someone like Ana, who can help you get ready for your visit and answer any urgent questions you may have, might call you the next time you have a medical exam scheduled.
Ana, like many nurses in the United States, has been educated to relax patients with her pleasant, soothing manner.
In contrast to them, though, she is also available for talk in a variety of languages, including Hindi and Haitian Creole, around the clock.
The reason for this is that Ana is an artificial intelligence program developed by Hippocratic AI, one of several new businesses providing solutions to automate time-consuming duties often carried out by medical assistants and nurses.
The use of increasingly complex computer programs by hundreds of hospitals to track patients’ vital signs, identify emergencies, and initiate step-by-step action plans for care is the most obvious indication of artificial intelligence’s encroachment into the healthcare industry.
Previously, nurses and other medical professionals handled these tasks.
Hospitals report that AI is reducing understaffing and exhaustion among their nurses while increasing their productivity.
In contrast, nursing unions contend that this poorly understood technology is displacing nurses’ knowledge and lowering the standard of care that patients receive.
Michelle Mahon of National Nurses United stated that hospitals have been waiting for a time when they had something legitimate enough to take the place of nurses.
“The goal of the entire ecosystem is to automate, de-skill, and eventually replace caregivers.”
The largest nursing union in the United States, Mahon’s Group, has assisted in planning over 20 protests at hospitals around the nation, advocating for the right to control the use of AI and the protection from disciplinary action should they choose to ignore automated counsel.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the incoming health secretary, proposed that AI nurses “as good as any doctor” could assist in providing care in rural regions in January, the group became even more alarmed.
AI can “liberate doctors and nurses from all the paperwork,” according to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was nominated to supervise Medicare and Medicaid on Friday.
At first, Hippocratic AI advertised their AI helpers for $9 per hour, which is around $40 more than a registered nurse makes.
Since then, it has abandoned that wording in favor of promoting its offerings and attempting to reassure clients that they have undergone extensive testing. Interview requests were not granted by the company.
AI in hospitals has the potential to produce harmful recommendations and false alarms.
Sensors, microphones, and motion-sensing cameras are just a few of the technologies that hospitals have been experimenting with for years to enhance treatment and save expenses.
In an attempt to anticipate medical issues and guide nurses’ care, data is now being connected to electronic medical records and examined, often before the patient has been assessed.
Adam Hart worked in the emergency department at Dignity Health in Henderson, Nevada, when a newly arrived patient was marked for sepsis, a potentially fatal infection-related reaction, by the hospital’s computer system.
He was required by hospital procedure to give a hefty dosage of intravenous fluids right away.
However, upon closer inspection, Hart discovered that he was caring for a patient with kidney failure, or dialysis.
To prevent the kidneys from being overloaded with fluid, these individuals must be closely monitored.
“You need to keep your thinking cap on—that’s why you’re being paid as a nurse,” Hart said, adding, “To turn over our thought processes to these devices is reckless and dangerous.
“Hart and other nurses say they understand the goal of AI: to make it easier for nurses to monitor multiple patients and quickly respond to problems.
However, the reality is often a barrage of false alarms, sometimes erroneously flagging basic bodily functions—such as a patient having a bowel movement—as emergencies.
The oncology nurse Melissa Beebe of UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento stated, “You’re trying to concentrate on your work, but you’re getting all these distracting alerts that may or may not mean something.”
Due to the large number of false alarms, it is difficult to determine when it is accurate and when it is not.
Is AI useful in hospitals?
Michelle Collins, dean of Loyola University’s College of Nursing, points out that even the most advanced technologies would overlook clues that nurses regularly detect, like facial expressions and smells. However, people are also fallible.
Collins stated, “It would be foolish to completely turn our back on this.”
“We should be cautious that it doesn’t replace the human element, but we should embrace what it can do to enhance our care.”
One estimate states that the COVID-19 outbreak caused the largest staffing decline in 40 years, with over 100,000 nurses quitting their jobs.
According to the U.S. government, there will be approximately 190,000 new nursing positions through 2032 as the country’s population ages and nurses retire.
Hospital managers envision AI playing a critical role in this trend—not replacing medical staff, but assisting them in communicating with patients and gathering information.
“They are conversing with a human being at times and not at others.”
Staff members at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in Little Rock must make hundreds of phone calls each week to get patients ready for surgery.
Prior to anesthesia, nurses verify details on medications, cardiac disorders, and other diseases that need to be thoroughly examined, such as sleep apnea.
The issue is that a large number of patients avoid answering their phones until the evening, typically between dinner and their kids’ bedtime.
“We need to figure out how to call a few hundred people within a 120-minute window, but I don’t want to pay my staff overtime to do that,” stated Dr. Joseph Sanford, who is in charge of the center’s health information technology.
The hospital has been contacting patients and healthcare providers, sending and receiving medical records, and summarizing their contents for human staff members since January using an AI assistant from Qventus.
According to Qventus, 115 hospitals are utilizing their technology, which seeks to increase hospital profits by reducing burnout, reducing cancellations, and speeding up surgical turnarounds.
The application introduces itself as an AI helper at the start of each call.
“We always want to be completely honest with our patients that they are speaking to a human at times and not at others,” Sanford stated.
Laptops 1000While businesses such as Qventus offer administrative services, some AI developers believe their technology has potential.
A human-like avatar that can make video chats with patients is the specialty of the Israeli startup Xoltar.
An AI assistant that teaches patients cognitive pain management strategies is being developed by the business in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic.
Additionally, the business is creating an avatar to assist smokers in quitting.
According to Xoltar, patients have spoken to the program for roughly 14 minutes during early testing, allowing them to recognize body language, facial emotions, and other clues.
Such tools might be effective for patients who are proactive about their treatment and generally healthy, according to nursing specialists who research artificial intelligence. But most people in the health system aren’t like that.
“We need to think about whether or not chatbots are positioned for those people because they are the ones who are consuming the majority of health care in the United States,” Roschelle Fritz of the University of California Davis School of Nursing stated.
