HEALTHTECH: What trends are you seeing related to clinical workflows at healthcare organizations?
SHIPPY: I have the opportunity to talk to customers all across the U.S., and there are a couple of things they tell us are top of mind for them. One is what’s happening with their workforce. They want to make sure they have all of the tools they need right at their fingertips, as well as seamless experiences, meaning that when they’re working, the tools they’re asking for are part of their workflows.
Where we’re seeing great opportunity is in how we make it easier for them to document. How do we make it easier for them to capture what’s being told to them by the patient? How do we make it easier for them to take the information they have and turn that into the clinical insights they need?
A big part of that’s going to come from bringing all of the data together and having it in front of them when they’re seeing the patient. If I have information from the electronic health record, information that the patient just told me, along with outside records, can all of those be summarized? That way, as the clinician is right in front of the patient, he or she has all of the information. Instead of looking down and constantly typing or looking for things, they can have a meaningful dialogue.
Part of how we’re doing that is by providing generative AI tools to summarize all of those clinical notes. Another way to do it is by having organizations bring all of their data together in a data lake. Finally, we’re working with EHR vendors to say, “How do we put these add-on applications into the workflow, so the clinician is never leaving the EHR?”
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HEALTHTECH: How is AWS working to improve clinical workflows with its solutions?
SHIPPY: Not only does AWS have a broad and deep set of cloud services but we also have purpose-built services that are just for healthcare. We have a service called AWS HealthScribe, which allows clinicians to focus on having conversations with their patients. Those conversations are then transcribed and made readily available so that they can quickly annotate them, make any corrections needed and get to the next level of care. That’s one way of being able to do it.
Another is with AWS HealthImaging. We can take one image and use it in the cloud, allowing that same image to be used over and over and over. Why is that helpful? The first reason is that it’s readily available to everybody who needs it. The second is that it’s one image being saved, not multiple images being saved. There’s a cost savings in using that particular service.
HEALTHTECH: I’ve heard that AWS HealthScribe was created to be used by all clinicians, not just physicians. How does it work for care teams?
SHIPPY: I’m a physician, so I can say that there are so many times that we talk about the physicians, but physicians know that we are part of a larger care team. There are nurses and allied health professionals, such as occupational therapists, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, etc. Everybody on the team needs better tools to help them do the work that they do and to practice at the top of their licenses, which is so incredibly important for their resilience.
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HEALTHTECH: How else can healthcare organizations benefit from AI solutions?
SHIPPY: Healthcare organizations can benefit from AI solutions because they can help them with their operational efficiency. AI can help them anticipate what resources are needed. Predictive analytics can help organizations determine how many patients usually come in during a specific time of year. What areas of the hospital or the clinic are they usually in? What supplies do we need? What does the staffing need to be? It’s going to help them become much more efficient.
Then from a clinical standpoint, AI can help the organization ensure that it has all of the information it needs. How do we ensure that we understand everything about this patient so that when we’re ready to discharge them from the clinic or from the hospital, they have all of the supplies they need and they know exactly when their follow-up appointment is going to be? How can we make that a little bit easier for them?
Then you can start to look at what it means for patients. When they are outside the four walls of the clinic or the hospital, do they have all of the information they need? Can we better educate them on their disease process? Can we help them manage it at home? Can we give them prompts to let them know when it’s time for a medication or to do a particular exercise? Those are all of the things that are going to get better with generative AI and solutions coming from the cloud.
