by Liz Keller, VP Client Services
In the first couple days of CHIME Digital Recharge, it’s clear this year’s focus (where we’re seeing case studies, use cases, and overall discussion) is how the next phase of technology power is upon us: Artificial Intelligence. We’re asking, how can we leverage AI to improve operational efficiencies, but ultimately improve the delivery of care.
One topic really struck me, and that’s Ambient Intelligence.
This year has brought us so many things, and while much of 2020 has been bleak, there have been many advances to how we perform our daily jobs. While many health systems had already started on their Digital Transformation journey, this year has further heightened the need to use technology as a tool for keeping our communities healthy. The goals of digital transformations are to reduce psychological and technical friction and reduce technical overhead so that patient care can be at the forefront of the patient/physician relationship.
What does this mean in real life?
At the start of the process, and nothing new for healthcare in the last 10 years, is the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Deploying an EHR sets the stage to add on to and drive a more robust, all-encompassing patient care platform. One of the newest add-on technologies is Ambient Intelligence.
What is Ambient Intelligence?
Ambient Intelligence tools record the patient encounter (with patient permission) and update the patient medical record to provide a better and more accurate narrative. Ambient Intelligence has been proven to further drive physician system adoption, satisfaction, and increase note quality while decreasing physician burnout and the pressures of patient interaction with technology burdens. For the patient, it means more interaction with their physicians and a better, more complete history of their overall health.
What’s next?
This is just a starting point of what Ambient Intelligence and Digital Transformation can do. Future plans could be to move this into the OR setting so that the surgeon and staff can focus on the task at hand and have the whole procedure recorded. Or maybe moving this technology to ambulances to be able to get the whole patient journey leading up to the hospital and further capture the story.
But why stop there? What about recording patient daily lifestyle choices and interactions incorporated with remote monitoring, so physicians have real-life, real-time updates? The opportunities are endless and the innovation keeps coming, are we ready for it?
