Transforming Healthcare: The Role Of AI In Enhancing The Patient Experience
Anika Chinthakunta
Posted On August 16, 2024
In an era where technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives, healthcare stands as one of the most impacted sectors. Imagine a world where diseases are prevented rather than cured, where patients receive personalized treatment plans tailored to their unique genetic makeup, and where healthcare is accessible and affordable for everyone.
This is the future that healthcare organizations are striving to create. At the heart of this transformation is artificial intelligence (AI), a powerful tool reshaping the way healthcare services are delivered.
The Digital Pulse
Think of AI as a smart assistant that can understand and work with medical information just like a human would. Specifically, it uses advanced algorithms and software, much like our brains, to rapidly understand and interpret complex medical data. This capability can significantly aid medical professionals and enhance the patient experience by providing precise, personalized and timely insights.
The Lifeline: Why AI Matters In Healthcare
The journey toward a technology-powered healthcare experience has been significantly accelerated by recent global health challenges. However, healthcare organizations continue to grapple with enduring issues that impact their ability to transform patient experiences and deliver improved outcomes. These include:
- Staffing shortages: The healthcare sector is experiencing a critical shortage of skilled professionals. This not only affects the quality of patient care but also puts additional hours and stress on existing staff, leading to burnout and reduced job satisfaction. In fact, 62.8% of the physicians who responded to a survey said they experienced at least one symptom of burnout.1
- Community health management: Managing the health of populations, especially in diverse and often underserved communities, remains a complex task given the disparity in access to healthcare services.
- Evolving patient expectations: Today’s patients desire quick, personalized and convenient care, which requires healthcare organizations to adapt and innovate continuously.
- Rising costs: The cost of delivering healthcare is escalating, making it increasingly difficult for government healthcare organizations to manage budgets while maintaining high standards of care.
By leveraging AI, healthcare organizations can begin to address these issues, leading to better patient experiences and outcomes and providing clinical teams with much-needed support. There are multiple ways in which AI can benefit healthcare organizations.
Improved patient outcomes
66% of organizations expect AI to transform customer support by streamlining processes and personalizing services.2 In healthcare, AI can quickly analyze substantial amounts of data to develop personalized treatment plans, which can help increase the speed and accuracy of preventative screenings.
Consider a patient with chronic kidney disease (CKD). AI can analyze the patient’s medical history and real-time health data from wearable devices to understand the unique progression of their condition. It can identify patterns and correlations that might be missed in traditional healthcare settings due to the sheer volume and complexity of the data.
For instance, AI might find that the patient’s CKD progresses more rapidly when they consume a diet high in sodium. Using this information, AI can help develop a personalized treatment plan that includes a low-sodium diet. Moreover, if the patient’s dietary habits change, AI can recommend adjustments to the treatment plan in real time, leading to slower progression of CKD, fewer complications and improved quality of life.
Increased operational efficiency
Approximately 70% of organizations are leveraging AI to boost operational efficiency and drive innovation.2 In the healthcare industry, AI can automate routine tasks such as appointment scheduling and billing, which can reduce administrative costs and allow healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care. Additionally, with comprehensive apps made for fast appointment scheduling, sophisticated online symptom checkers, e-triage tools and systems to access electronic health records, AI can offer early detection and management of minor health issues without requiring a hospital visit. This not only benefits patients but also helps alleviate the strain on hospital resources, allowing staff to focus on more critical cases.
Cost savings
Through automation and analytics that improve operational efficiency, AI can save costs and enhance business performance.2 For example, using predictive analytics, AI can analyze patient data to predict potential health issues before they become serious. This leads to early interventions and reduces the need for expensive treatments or hospitalizations, playing a significant role in advancing population health.
Consider a patient with a family history of cancer. AI can analyze the patient’s medical history, lifestyle and genetic information to predict their risk of cancer before symptoms start to show. This can save considerable time and costs associated with late-stage cancer diagnosis and treatment.
On the administrative side, predictive analytics provided by AI can interpret data concerning geography, disease prevalence and socioeconomic factors to forecast patient admission rates and lengths of stay. Automatically gaining patient insights from AI allows hospitals to better manage staffing, supply chain strategies and inventory costs. This can significantly enhance not only the delivery of care but also cost efficiency for patients, healthcare organizations, insurers and governments.3
The Backbone Of Care: A Secure, Modernized Network
AI has immense potential in healthcare. However, its effectiveness hinges on the underlying network infrastructure. Legacy networks, prone to outages and offering limited capacity, are no longer sufficient because they struggle to provide the swift, dependable and secure data transmission that AI algorithms require.
Modern networks can meet this demand, offering the necessary bandwidth and speed for AI to analyze large volumes of healthcare data as it performs real-time patient monitoring or telediagnosis.
Moreover, due to the extreme sensitivity of healthcare data, advanced encryption and cybersecurity measures that proactively protect against threats are paramount, as a breach can have dire implications for patient privacy and organizational credibility.
In addition to speed and security, modern networks also offer scalability, enabling healthcare organizations to manage growing AI workloads without compromising performance and integrate innovative technologies without constant upgrades.
Finally, network modernization supports cloud integration, offering a flexible, secure and scalable platform for storing and accessing vast datasets—which AI algorithms can analyze from anywhere at any time—thereby enhancing interoperability and collaboration among healthcare professionals.
Why Lumen?
In the age of AI, secure and modern networks are more important than ever, especially in healthcare. However, IT teams find themselves stretched thin, struggling to implement and maintain these innovative solutions on top of their existing workload. In fact, 43% of healthcare organizations cite a lack of internal skilled personnel as a significant hurdle in implementing a digital infrastructure.2
This is where Lumen steps in.
Our network provides a secure and scalable backbone for AI with low latency and global connectivity. By partnering with Lumen, a leader in digital transformation, healthcare organizations can focus less on IT management and maintenance and instead leverage the power of AI to unlock growth potential and drive innovation.
As digital horizons expand, Lumen is poised to navigate enterprises through network transformation, providing enhanced connectivity, agility and security on time and on budget. With the combined power of AI and Lumen, healthcare organizations can seamlessly enhance patient experiences and outcomes and provide critical support to clinical teams.
Are you ready to upgrade your network?
1 Forbes, Reimagining Healthcare with AI: Three Key Areas for Transformation, Dec. 2022.
2 IDC, InfoBrief (sponsored by Lumen), July 2024.
3 Deloitte U.S., At the Nexus of Health Care and Generative AI, 2024.
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