Like many health system leaders, Intermountain Health’s Rob Allen is experimenting with and implemnting artificial intelligence tools in his 34-hospital system which also includes 400 clinics. The Salt Lake City, Utah-based health system has deployed clinical documentation and ambient AI technologies that help to automatically generate the patient note.

But in an interview during the J.P. Morgan Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Allen marveled at a technology that he hasn’t deployed yet: an AI nurse that communicates with patients. In other words, an AI tool that can build a relationship with a patient, he said.

“I listened to snippets of a 45 minute conversation where an AI tool called the patient after a hospitalization to follow up with them. The intent was to ask a couple of questions about clinical care and the follow up of how [they’re] doing clinically. But the patient wanted to talk and the tool talked to them for 45 minutes. In a normal structure where we’ve got nurses calling, they cannot not spend that time.”

In today’s world, a nurse doesn’t have the liberty to devote that much time to a single patient because a nursing shortage means they are juggling an ever-increasing load of patients. By contrast, mutiple deployments of an AI nurse could be game-changing from a pure patient-engagement perspective.

“It was fascinating how the tool just followed the conversation and engaged with [the patient] — what’s on your mind — asked probing questions. And after 45 minutes came back and said, ‘I almost forgot, I wanted to ask you this question’ and asked the question they wanted.”

What is unprecedented in that it mechanizes empathy and allows a quick scale up when needed. Remember how one study showed that AI chatbots were better at being sympathetic than flesh and blood doctors. Not surprising, given the workload of human physicians these days.

“Tools will create space that allow clinicians to do their job even better, to enjoy their job better and create relationships on behalf of those clinicians where they don’t have the time,” Allen said. “And those are things we’ve got to get into. We’re trying to make sure we find this right balance – that AI is not taking over. You have [doctors] with compassionate, caring hearts that are also balancing and making sure it’s best for you [the patient], but they’ve got the support so they can actually do their part.

It goes without saying that health system leaders and others involved in developing such tools have to ensure that erroneous information is not being fed into health systems or to patients through such AI-patient encounters.

Meanwhile, for a sense of the AI tools that Intermountain Health has already deployed and some that the nonprofit is piloting, see below:

Photo: ipopba, Getty Images