Emerging HealthTech Trends in 2024

We’re back with your weekly dose of HealthTech news, insights and analysis.

What’s inside this week’s edition:

• Generative AI in EHR saves 2 hours a day

• Combating healthcare burnout with technology

• Emerging HealthTech trends in the coming months

INSIGHT
Generative AI in EHR Saves 2 Hours a Day

Generative AI integration in EHR is potentially saving 2 hours of clinician’s time spent in documentation per day.

What Is Happening: John Muir Health and Ambience Healthcare have collaborated to launch a generative AI platform that fully integrates with Epic electronic health record (EHR). Ambience’s AI medical scribe generative AI platform will be able to read data directly from the EHR. It will also be able to write directly into Epic on behalf of JMH clinicians.

Promising Benefits: The median onboarding time for Ambience’s AutoScribe is less than one shift. Full-time clinicians are saving 1-2 hours everyday on clinical documentation. This is not only reducing clinician’s “pyjama time” - documentation work done after hours and on weekends but also improving documentation quality.

Read more about the positive feedback here.

Integrating Generative AI in Medical Practices: generative AI’s integration with EHRs allows providers to focus on patient needs without the burden of typing notes into EHRs. Here is how medical practices can benefit:

1. Custom developing EHR software: One size fits all approach rarely works when it comes to software. Custom development of AI powered EHR is a great way of ensuring your software perfectly meets your unique requirements.

2. Developing AI software that integrates with existing EHR: If your practice already has an EHR implemented, developing an AI tool that seamlessly integrates with your EHR and helps automate documentation can be a viable option for your practice.

TOP STORY
Combating Burnout in Healthcare With AI

• 63% of physicians and nurses across the nation reported experiencing a moderate or significant level of burnout in their workplace.

• 57% of providers agree that excessive EHR documentation is one of the contributing factors leading to burnout.

AI aided documentation to combat burnout: Artificial intelligence is proving to be crucial in addressing and diminishing the burdens associated with the EHR. 

UC San Diego Health, Madison, Wis.-based UW Health, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care are currently piloting a new integration from EHR vendor Epic Systems that uses Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service with Epic's EHR software. 

The aim of the partnership is to use generative AI to help healthcare organizations increase productivity and enhance patient care.

SPOTLIGHT
News in numbers

Medical group leaders overwhelmingly said their overall regulatory burden increased over the past 12 months, according to a report from the Medical Group Management Association survey. 

Here are the lists of tasks reportedly found most burdensome:

1. Prior authorization: 89.35%

2. Audits and appeals: 68.23%

3. Medicare Quality Payment Program (MIPS/APMs): 67.19%

4. Surprise billing and good faith estimate requirements: 63.38%

5. Medicare advantage chart audits 61.73%

ANALYSIS
Emerging HealthTech Trends in 2024

• 85% of health executives acknowledge that technology has become an inextricable part of the human experience.

Healthcare IT is a promising premise that has the potential to drive healthcare forward, make it more accessible, improve interoperability, and enhance patient experience.

From artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance efficiency and accuracy to virtual health visits revolutionizing patient care, here are the most important healthcare technology trends that HealthTech innovators need to stay on top of.

This article dives deeper into each of the following areas along with their potential future applications and use cases:

1. Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

2. Cloud Computing

3. VR and AR in Healthcare

4. Big Data and Predictive Analysis

5. Internet of Medical Things

6. Nanomedicine

7. Metaverse

8. Blockchain

9. Wearable Devices

10. Machine Learning and NLP

11. Robotics

Read the full article here.

SNIPPETS
What else is making news

• Guthrie Clinic awarded for AI-powered virtual nursing platform. The remote nursing platform, which is run out of a virtual command center, reduced nurse turnover from 25% to 13%, Additionally, the platform has saved the health system $7 million.

• Amazon's One Medical inked a major partnership with Health Transformation Alliance, expanding access to its primary care services to 67 employers and nearly 5 million employees.

• UnitedHealth sued over use of algorithm to deny care for MA members

• Layer Health, an artificial intelligence startup that aims to organize healthcare data, launched after receiving $4 million in funding from GV (Google Ventures), General Catalyst, and Inception Health, the innovation arm of Milwaukee-based Froedtert Health.