Hospitals are tinkering with artificial intelligence solutions to alleviate cost pressures, but the safe integration of AI can be a challenging endeavor, not a quick fix to decrease spending.
Seventy-nine percent of healthcare facilities use or plan to use AI technologies to curate clinical data, with nearly half of these facilities identifying reduced administrative tasks as their primary goal with AI this year, according to a recent survey published by clinical data management company Q-Centrix.
AI has the potential to significantly save time and lower costs, but the risk an AI model can introduce compared to an individual's impact is significant.
"Models create model-sized problems; inevitably, someone is going to be in the headlines because [large language models] broke something that negatively impacted a large patient population," Brian Foy, chief product officer at Q-Centrix, said. "The only way to avoid the risk is with precision — but precision at scale is extraordinarily complex, and it requires a combination of access, technology, and human intervention. Unless hospitals are willing to take a thoughtful, long-term AI approach that includes all these elements — or partner with an organization that has a proven track record for exploring AI safely — they may need to consider other ways to reduce costs."
Health systems aren't just using AI to reduce costs; they're also exploring new growth opportunities in areas traditionally seen as cost centers, such as quality. Using clinical data sets from registries for research creates new ways to generate revenue.
Three-quarters of hospital leaders surveyed said their facility is currently sharing or plans to share de-identified clinical data with other organizations for research purposes, but almost two-thirds of clinical trials fail to enroll enough patients for an effective study, according to the report.
"Hospitals sit on a mountain of data that can be used for research, and leaders are starting to realize how much value that data holds for the communities they serve," Victor Wang, senior vice president of data and research at Q-Centrix, said. "Exploring these types of expansions of their clinical data usage has great potential for hospitals: they can contribute to life-saving research, offer patients early access to innovative treatments, and stay competitive. Providing their data for funded research opportunities opens up entirely new revenue streams for hospitals."
Click here for more details on the survey.