healthcare technology

AI-powered smartphone app can reduce physician burnout, enhance patient experience

 

Virtual assistants are a fast-growing phenomenon, not only with the use of consumer products such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, but as part of automated communications with many industries, such as airlines and banking. Market intelligence firm Research and Markets released a report earlier this year forecasting:

 

The healthcare market has lagged behind, but in September, Nuance and Epic released the first version of a conversational virtual assistant. It operates on Nuance's Dragon Medical cloud-based platform and is available through Epic Haiku, a mobile app for physicians that interfaces with the Epic EHR. The assistant is an upgrade to the app, used by physicians, which provides secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results, and notes, while supporting dictation.

 

HOW VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS WILL CHANGE HEALTHCARE SHORT TERM 

According to Sean Bina, vice president of access applications for Epic, the assistant can answer questions such as:

• What are the patient's A1c test results?
• What medication is the patient taking?
• What's my schedule for today?
• Has the patient had a colonoscopy?

 

The immediate impact has the potential to reduce provider burnout, diminish difficulty locating information in the EHR, and change the physician-patient dynamic.

 

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

VUMC is taking the virtual assistant another step further and developing contextually useful summaries to provide an overview of relevant patient information for the physician to listen to before entering the exam room.

 

Among the other capabilities in development:

• Medication and test ordering. While Dragon Medical currently has these capabilities built into its system, Epic has not yet activated this feature. During testing with Vanderbilt, the mean time for ordering medications via the virtual assistant was 17 seconds, compared to 50 seconds using the mobile app without voice assistance.
   
• Decision support tools that could issue alerts, for example, if a patient has adverse reactions or allergies to medications the doctor orders.
   
• A desktop version of the virtual assistant is planned by Nuance and Epic.

 

read the entire article at https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/virtual-assistant-eases-ehr-distractions-physicians