The pandemic gives way to technological advances in healthcare. The strain of COVID on frontline staff, and on existing systems already used to treat, support, and serve patients, has spurred the development of new technology to assist and respond. complex business needs.
Technology like AI chatbots and ChatGPT can handle tasks like responding to insurance claims, among others, allowing doctors to spend time on patient-centric tasks. Given the potential of AI, it is tempting to believe that at some point it will be able to complete tasks without human effort or input.
Artificial intelligence will never eliminate the need for pharmacists, even with recent developments in its capabilities, said Samm Anderegg, CEO of DocStation, a pharmaceutical information technology company. WHO.
Healthcare IT News sat down with Anderegg to find out exactly why he believes this is the case and what the future of AI and pharmaceuticals holds.
Q. You support how technology can enhance healthcare, but you are wary of healthcare professionals placing too much of a stake in artificial intelligence. What balance are you trying to achieve here?
ONE. Artificial intelligence has the incredible potential to change nearly every industry imaginable. Currently, we are seeing the power of consumer tools like ChatGPT making our daily lives easier by processing huge amounts of data on the internet to pay. Answer complex questions and compose helpful abstracts, articles, emails and itineraries.
We’re also seeing AI play a role in businesses, taking minutes for virtual meetings and recommending targeted ads based on our interactions with social media posts and content. .
Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos is well-suited to building e-commerce or marketing companies. But when you disrupt things in a healthcare context, the consequences can be detrimental, such as misdiagnosis, medication errors, or most seriously, endangering the patient’s life. .
Mistakes can lead to patient harm, adverse outcomes, or higher costs. What’s interesting is when we do it right. There are so many manual, labor-intensive administrative tasks in the healthcare process that it is impossible to maximize our time on the things that we as clinicians can and only do. what we can do.
Just as it makes our lives at home and at work easier, AI can reduce or even better eliminate the manly non-clinical tasks currently part of our daily routine so that we can spend more time at work. what we love and we’re trained to do – take care of patients. Leveraging AI to enhance patient care and improve patient/provider experience is paramount.
However, we must be vigilant, careful, and responsible about how we leverage AI relative to other industries to reduce risks and potential for harm.
Q. You warn healthcare executives not to think that AI can replace pharmacists. Why can’t AI achieve such a feat?
ONE. There are a number of traditional pharmaceutical functions that artificial intelligence is capable of replacing. What people tend to overlook is the rapidly evolving role of the pharmacist in the healthcare team.
At the turn of the century, most vaccines were available in primary health care clinics. More than 20 years later, during a pandemic, more than three-quarters of people are now vaccinated at pharmacies.
Healthcare is rapidly moving to convenient and accessible retail healthcare locations, and pharmacies are at the forefront of this transition. In response, the pharmacy practice model is evolving to be more service-oriented.
Pharmacists are now taking on more mid-tier provider roles within the healthcare team and are ideally positioned to address issues of access to care, particularly in rural and disadvantaged areas. With that said, patients appreciate the human touch provided by a pharmacist, just as they appreciate their PCP.
While AI can provide information, it cannot provide the same level of understanding and problem-solving as human pharmacists. Using this frame of reference, we can think of AI impacting the role of pharmacists in the same way we think about AI impacting the role of primary care providers. .
While AI has the potential to enhance parts of the care process, patients still need a healthcare professional to communicate, educate, and guide them in their healthcare journey. Pharmacists are often the most accessible, frequent health care providers on the healthcare team.
Patients and the entire healthcare industry will continue to rely on pharmacists to act as a trusted front-line care provider and patient advocate.
Q. So what can AI do to help pharmacists do their jobs better and more efficiently?
ONE. Like other healthcare providers, artificial intelligence has the potential to make the pharmacist’s job easier and better by automating administrative tasks and enhancing the care process. patient care.
The first potential application is to make administrative tasks and functions normally assigned by support staff faster and easier. During the pandemic, many pharmacies have adopted software to schedule appointments for vaccinations and other services.
There are a number of AI-powered chat services available that can assist patients with non-clinical functions such as scheduling appointments, initiating refills, and contacting for patient follow-up.
As pharmacies evolve from dispensing drugs to delivering services, there are many applications around the medical billing process and revenue cycle that can be improved with AI. When a payment is made manually by a support agent, an error will occur, resulting in the denial or delay of the refund.
Automation can help eliminate errors by flagging incomplete or incorrect information before submitting a claim. This can reduce the number of rejected requests, make the checkout process more efficient, and maximize potential revenue.
Leveraging these tools to perform administrative tasks is generally low-risk, but makes it easier to make extremely inefficient and cumbersome processes without the risk of errors. or harm the patient.
Pharmacies are also partnering with payers in value-based arrangements to improve clinical outcomes.
While some software and tool vendors leverage basic logic (e.g., if/then decision trees) to identify patients at risk, AI is capable of predicting patients who will soon be at risk. . For example, if a patient refills medication regularly and starts taking it later than expected for several months in a row, the AI can identify this non-adherence trend, summarize the information, and present it to the patient. pharmacist for assessment and patient access if warranted.
Apps like these can prevent adverse events, improve patient outcomes, and save the healthcare system money.
Just as AI reads large amounts of information and builds vacation itineraries, it can also be used to summarize medical information such as diagnoses, allergies, test values, treatment history, medical records, and more. progress notes, etc., to automate documentation of meetings, identify diagnoses or recommend possible treatments.
A relatively benign example would suggest the most sensible drug choice when considering the formulary used for a particular patient’s pharmacy/health insurance.
While leveraging AI for clinical use cases would be a significant step forward, it is likely that there will be information that is not connected to or reviewed by AI that could lead to risks.
This is why pharmacists and other service providers still need to evaluate recommendations for safety, effectiveness, and appropriateness, from a holistic approach, before making recommendations.
These examples are merely preliminary to how AI can make the pharmacist’s day-to-day work and responsibilities easier, more efficient, and better accomplished in the future.
Q. What are some legal and ethical considerations that pharmacists think AI will have difficulty regulating?
ONE. The first legal and ethical considerations that pharmacists and other service providers should be aware of surround potential bias identified when using artificial intelligence in healthcare settings . AI algorithms are trained using historical data that can be biased due to lack of access to healthcare in underserved populations.
Without adequate access to health care, underserved populations may not be properly diagnosed or treated like other populations with similar risk profiles. medical risk. It is important for pharmacists and other suppliers to understand how AI algorithms are developed and trained and how quality assurance is implemented to understand potential bias.
It is critically important for vendors to understand the risk of errors in clinical applications of AI. While AI is capable of making clinical recommendations, algorithms may not have access to the critical information needed to make “informed” decisions about treatment regimens.
A serious adverse outcome could be that providers rely heavily or even blindly on AI to make treatment decisions. Our ethical responsibility as a supplier is to “do no harm”. It is important for pharmacists to understand the potential for harm when relying on AI to enhance clinical decision-making.
Another consideration that may not be obvious is patient consent. The use of AI, especially in healthcare settings, is still highly experimental. Thinking about it in context makes it easy to compare against the clinical trial space.
Just as patients understand the potential risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial involving a new treatment, patients and their providers must understand the risks and benefits of using AI as part of their healthcare experience. The tech industry is known to be one that is often left unchecked based on the pace of innovation, compared to the policymaking process. (Think of crypto regulation in the financial industry.)
To “do no harm,” part of our responsibility is to adopt the same informed consent methods with AI as we use in other areas of the healthcare industry.
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Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
