AI in Healthcare: Enhancing Human Expertise

Its well known Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes it possible to get more done in less time – which is why its applications are perfectly suited to healthcare and supporting healthcare workers. To set the scene: Mayo Clinic research completed in early 2022 suggested nearly 63% of doctors had at least one symptom of physician burnout, up from 38.2% in 2020. Physicians reported increasing levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and felt less satisfied with work-life balance.  

Fortunately, 2024 physician burnout statistics from the American Medical Association (AMA) suggest better news. Burnout levels fell almost 15% post-pandemic, job stress declined, and more physicians felt valued by their organizations. Although the initial spike in burnout was likely due to the pandemic, the AMA attributes at least part of the improvement to targeted interventions in workflows, inbox management, and delegation of tasks.  

AI is revolutionizing healthcare practices across the globe. Eliminating some of the root causes of physician burnout, such as administrative overload, can help to enhance healthcare provider’s capacity to deliver care. Rather than working to replace the clinical team, well designed AI platforms can compliment them: tackling the most tedious administration and leaving physicians more time to do the work they trained for. The result is improved clinical procedures, new diagnostic methods, and a higher quality of patient care. 

Streamlining admin saves physicians’ time for higher value tasks 

AI can process vast amounts of data up to 70% faster. With an AI tool trained in your industry domain and paperwork needs, the AI model can read, organize, and index thousands of pages of medical records, billing reports, or messages. 

In a 2024 Google Cloud survey, clinicians reported spending as much as 28 hours on admin each week – leaving them less time for patient care. The same report suggests that 82% of clinicians, 81% of medical staff, and 77% of claims staff agree that administration contributes to feelings of burnout. This is no surprise, as recent reports found that reported levels of clinical burnout decreased by 40-63% during trials for an AI powered notetaker. 

However, administrative overload isn’t the only way physicians benefit from AI. In a cross-sectional study of more than 18,000 American doctors, those who felt that their personal values (such as being able to deliver high quality care, being treated like professionals, or having their clinical work appreciated) didn’t align with the organization were significantly more likely to leave it.

Estimates from the AMA suggest that each physician who leaves the organization due to burnout costs $500,000 to over $1,000,000, signaling AI tools can significantly save money for the practice, as well as retain clinical expertise. 

Improving diagnostics and enhancing patient care

AI models can easily spot patterns in data, thanks to its ability to process huge volumes of data in a fraction of the time it takes a human reader. The outpaced time-saving possibility of these tools has played a role in diagnostic capabilities, leading Harvard Medicine to use AI models to identify drug candidates for rare disease. AI’s speed and utility has also been used to create medical imaging tools, such as Google’s DeepMind, that can intervene earlier and faster than treatments without AI. 

Pediatric hospitals like Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and Boston Children’s Hospital use AI to predict health outcomes in newborns and improve patient care earlier.  Other hospitals are taking note of the new use of modern technology with UCLA, Baylor College, and the Stanford Cancer Institute using AI platforms to support cancer research as well. 

AI opens up new possibilities for healthcare

AI is not a substitute for human expertise, and it isn’t meant to be. Human centered, carefully designed AI platforms should work in conjunction with the medical expert – which, in fact, is how these tools have always been designed. Expert systems have existed since the 1970s: not to replace the human doctor, but to capture nuances, spot patterns, and unlock further advancement in the medical field. 

When AI is used correctly, it can remove some of the unnecessary burden from today’s healthcare teams – and improve the patient experience at the same time.