The annual HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference, labeled HIMSS24, was held in the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida from Monday, March 11th through Friday, March 15th. Educational sessions began on Monday and continued through Tuesday with several focus areas, but Artificial Intelligence (AI) took center stage.
AI captivated attendees with its potential to impact healthcare organizations. Tuesday opened with a Keynote by Robert Garrett, CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health and Matt Renner, President of North America at Google Cloud on the role of AI to drive transformational change by personalizing the patient experience. This keynote set the stage for the attendee experiences in the educational sessions and when visiting the Exhibition Hall.
A Little History
A little over a decade ago, the term “cloud computing” entered the lexicon. At the time, most companies found it difficult to understand and embrace the value it would bring to their business favoring “tried and true” server, storage, and hypervisor infrastructures in their data centers. Admittedly, it remained a challenge for many years, particularly in healthcare, where most provider organizations used software that was hosted in dedicated data centers or purchased their software to run out of the software provider’s data centers. While the benefits of cloud computing are starting to be realized by healthcare organizations, adoption trails other industries. AI could have had a similar challenge for adoption, but the messaging and solutions are maturing quickly.
Today
Nearly every exhibitor on the show floor touted either AI development tools or how AI is integrated into their products. The diverse range of exhibits underscored the breadth of AI applications covering development platforms to contact centers, cybersecurity products, and safety and security.
Attendees were provided with real-world examples of AI applications that use natural language processing to create searchable, contextual text from spoken dictation. This data is used to document clinician/patient interactions to improve care outcomes and support insurance claims and reduce claims denials. There were several development platforms that leverage AI to identify candidates for clinical trials or other purposes connecting to the organization’s data lake turning data into actionable intelligence. Many of these use cases have potential but will need to demonstrate cost reduction or revenue generation in addition to clinical benefit.
Digging into the “How”
Much of the AI conversations at HIMSS focused on how AI is being leveraged to improve existing products and solutions. This is likely to be where adoption will have the earliest true impact. As previously mentioned, many products are improving due to the integration of AI into their solutions. ePlus represents many of the solution vendors found at the show as well as others that are implementing AI to increase the value and efficacy of their tools. A few examples of this are found in cybersecurity tools used to protect sensitive information, such as quickly identifying and preventing data exfiltration or identifying other unusual account activity that might be an indicator of compromise.
Several exhibitors leverage Computer vision tools to take advantage of the power of AI, available today to help solve problems with patient safety, employee safety, asset tracking and utilization, and throughput. Leveraging the cameras installed throughout the organization, video analytics tools can recognize when a patient or staff person needs assistance. Whether it’s a patient at risk of a fall or a potential infant abduction, these systems have the capability to alert the appropriate personnel for more immediate response and intervention before the disaster occurs. Other aspects of computer vision can identify when a patient has left their assigned room after discharge and alert hospital cleaning staff to quickly make the room available for the next patient, which improves operational efficiency for the hospital and the satisfaction of patients waiting for a bed to become available.
Adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools that could generate text, videos or images is likely to remain niche in the clinical setting due to concerns about appropriateness and the need to create governance and oversight, but use in patient engagement platforms shows great potential to improve experience in both the acute and ambulatory settings. A recent Deloitte survey reported that healthcare leaders are very bullish on the ability of GenAI to improve efficiencies.
HIMSS24 provided a glimpse into the evolving and maturing conversation of the use of AI in the healthcare setting. Visit the ePlus AI Ignite web page for more information on how our team can help your organization on your AI journey.