Globally, the modern healthcare domain is experiencing rapid digitization. Technology is helping healthcare organizations overcome the common challenges faced in this domain.
For instance, healthtech is helping organizations address inefficiencies in their workflow and uncertainty about how providers can move to value-based care without increasing the administrative burden.
A Forrester study reveals that nearly half of U.S. healthcare organizations are deploying AI to improve workflow efficiency. No wonder the AI healthcare market is projected to follow a CAGR of 38.6% and reach $110.61 billion by 2030.
Healthcare technology, or healthtech, is developed with the objective of enhancing patient care, improving operational efficiency, and achieving better health outcomes. Software, hardware, cloud-based computing, and other tools that healthtech encompasses are designed to simplify healthcare.
However, the technology requires in-depth knowledge of numerous interconnected systems and processes. If each cog in the system fails to work together, organizations have to deal with healthtech software development challenges that act as a hurdle for the technology going mainstream.
In recent years, AI has emerged as a disruptive tool aiding in decision-making and personalized interventions. AI agents in healthtech reduce administrative burdens and physician burnout. They have transformed patient-clinician relationships by improving processes like patient preregistration, preparing physicians with patient data before the appointment, and supporting them with informed decision making.
In this post, we will discuss in detail the growing role of AI agents in healthcare and how it is changing patient care for the better.
AI Agents and Their Role in Healthcare
AI agents are AI-enabled digital assistants that work to automate certain workloads and enhance decision-making. When combined with a variety of data types, AI agents use LLMs (large language models) and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) to answer questions and analyze language context and tone. Thus, AI agents can be assigned tasks to solve complex healthcare problems.
In a healthcare setting, when chat, text, or voice interfaces are used, AI agents can scan data, summarize the spoken words, and uncover signals that need human intervention. These agents work by encoding human language requests and sending them to the enterprise data store. They use LLMs to decode the query, search the knowledge base, combine the most relevant content and the query for a response, and send it back to the requester.
At an advanced level, AI agents in healthcare take historical data on disease outbreaks and interpret it against laboratory patterns. If it identifies a cluster of values, it helps clinicians predict an outbreak.
Healthcare AI agents are often embedded into administrative and clinical workflows like patient registration, where they automate filling out lengthy forms. They also take the manual data entry out of the hands of clinicians, allowing them to focus on patient care and medical knowledge application.
The healthcare domain is in the early stages of AI agent deployment due to various regulations and complexities. Many of these hurdles stem from software development challenges including interoperability, data privacy concerns, and compliance with healthcare standards. However, when implemented correctly, these digital assistants can significantly improve decision-making and patient care.
10 Ways AI Agents Are Revolutionizing Healthcare
The healthcare industry is yet to realize the full potential of AI agents. Yet, agents have several practical applications that can transform healthcare. AI agents relieve clinicians of manual work and assist them in gaining an informed and focused view of patients. They also provide patients with a ‘trusted assistant’ that guides them through the complex healthcare system.
Here are a few benefits AI agents offer in healthcare.
1. Supports Healthcare Providers
As mentioned earlier, AI agents help healthcare providers with decision-making by providing them with patient history before an appointment. It also offers access to medical informatics tools trained on specific clinical data sets.
For instance, a nephrologist with a chronic kidney disease patient can ask the AI agent to pull data on the latest research on the condition, lab and biopsy reports, CT scans, and more. This helps in predictive modeling analysis, which helps the doctor recommend an ideal course of action. This also reduces clinician and administrator burnout.
2. Reduces Costs
In a recent report by the Medical Group Management Association, 92% of medical groups shared their concerns about the increasing operating costs. Hence, healthcare organizations are looking to control costs.
AI agents can automate and streamline tasks like billing, coding, and payer reimbursement, thus reducing administrative costs.
3. Allows Improved Diagnostics
AI agents offer in-depth data on patient history, relevant medical research, and data from medical devices like CT scans and MRIs. All this helps them provide accurate diagnostics and suggest the best future course of action.
4. Offers Personalized Treatment
Since they collect patient data from various sources, AI agents can help generate personalized treatment plans for clinician review and approval. These agents also gather sensor data from personal devices and alert healthcare professionals when the readings are abnormal.
5. Enhances Efficiency
An American Medical Association report reveals that physicians spend over five hours with electronic health records (EHRs) for every eight hours spent with patients. Automating EHR updates and coding of treatments through AI agents can facilitate accurate reimbursement while helping physicians gain back time.
AI agents can ensure that doctors spend quality time with their patients to make appropriate clinical decisions.
6. Allows Real-Time Monitoring
AI agents help healthcare providers constantly monitor patient health by connecting with remote monitoring tools like smart watches, heart monitors, and glucometers. Thus, instead of relying on the data collected during office visits, physicians can access ready data that is interpreted by the AI agent.
Physicians get alerted when an intervention is necessary. The intervention encourages patients to be more health-conscious.
7. Accelerates Drug Development
Physicians cannot possibly remember every clinical trial that might be useful to their patients. AI agents can effortlessly track the latest clinical trials relevant to the patient’s case and medical history.
Further, they analyze patient data, predict drug interactions, and share potential side effects before the trial begins. By simulating the patient responses, AI agents help pharma companies design targeted trials, thereby improving the success rates and reducing side effects and associated costs.
8. Improves Accessibility
AI agents leverage natural language, making it easy for patients to take charge of their health. For instance, a patient could enter a query about a symptom or an adverse event, alert a healthcare provider, schedule an appointment, or get reminders on prescription renewal.
9. Offers Predictive Insights
AI agents leverage predictive analytics to help doctors predict a patient’s medical condition, remission rate, and health risks. This allows them to create an informed and tailored treatment plan for their patients.
10. Ensures Data Integrity and Security
In the healthcare domain, compliance with regulatory bodies like HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA is a must. AI agents help ensure data integrity and security by automating regulatory and compliance tasks.
This saves the organization from legal consequences and hefty fines and frees up valuable time for healthcare professionals.
The Need for an Expert Healthtech Development Partner
AI agents come with a world of benefits for the healthcare industry. Nonetheless, deployment cannot be complete without having the necessary technical expertise on hand. There must be an agreement with those experts who understand the nitty-gritty details of medical data standards, interoperability requirements, and different types of compliance frameworks.
Working with a HealthTech software development expert will allow you to develop systems that perform well and integrate with existing systems such as those for EHRs or imaging, among others.
Moreover, these professionals are mindful of protecting the privacy of their users and understand the ethical issues in telehealth. Once in partnership, they reduce the risks associated with deployment and speed up time-to-value. Working alongside AI agents and a healthtech development partner gives way to a reliable, scalable, and patient-centric solution.
Summing Up
Relieving physicians and healthcare professionals from their administrative tasks and improving operational efficiency have been the priorities for healthcare tech companies. AI agents promise to do just that-will relieve the burden, reduce costs and diagnostic errors, and ensure physicians have more quality time with their patients.
Looking forward, the role of AI will be much more dominant in not just enhancing patient experience but also overall diagnosis-and-treatment.
Gaurav Belani is a Senior SEO and Content Marketing Analyst at Growfusely, where he specializes in crafting data-driven content strategies for technology-focused brands.
Join the Discussion (0)
Become a Member or Sign In to Post a Comment