MADISON, Wis. (WIFR) – UW Health has released recommendations and regulations regarding artificial intelligence in healthcare after holding a roundtable discussion with 25 leaders on Capitol Hill.
Frank Liao, senior director of digital health and emerging technologies at UW Health, explains that AI is being used to reduce the workload of healthcare providers. He gives the example of AI pre-writing messages to deal with the volume of responses that healthcare providers have to send out.
AI can also help with transcribing notes, he said, a task that takes up a significant amount of time in a doctor’s day. Liao said AI can also be used for spell checking, and that the onus is still on the doctor because messages can’t be sent automatically. Doctors will have to edit or delete notes written by the AI.
“In some cases, doctors are so swamped with recording and documentation that they end up being so delayed that they’re trying to remember visits that happened 30 days ago. So if doctors can get their recording and documentation done sooner, we think it will improve patient safety because the information is more current for doctors,” Liao says.
Liao explained that while the use of AI isn’t currently patient-facing, patients are noticing and liking it because it allows doctors to spend less time typing and focus more on the patient.
In the future, Liao predicts that AI will support clinical decision-making by quickly summarizing patient information, especially in emergency situations.
“In some cases, emergency physicians have to read the equivalent of Moby Dick in terms of the number of pages and the amount of information in the patient chart,” Liao explained.
AI may eventually be able to make recommendations to doctors based on a patient’s medical history and medication profile.
“UW Health is taking steps forward in the field of AI. We are looking to use AI in a carefully managed way. We are exploring ways that AI can benefit our employees and indirectly benefit our patients. We look forward to continuing our careful work to see how AI can be used to improve healthcare,” Liao said.
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