A new chatbot for assisting women with osteoporosis and a virtual assistant for primary care providers are the latest examples of the disparate and expansive ways artificial intelligence is transforming the healthcare industry.
The latter tool, from startup Navina, helps providers by giving patient health status updates, generating progress notes and referral documents, easing the admin load on physicians and health care staff.
“Physician burnout from patient data overload has long been a critical issue in healthcare,” Navina CEO Ronen Lavi said in a statement. “Navina is committed to optimizing the technology that improves both the wellbeing and workflows of clinicians, and in turn, the lives of their patients.”
The osteoporosis tool comes courtesy of Wellen’s, a New York-based company that focuses on training programs to help patients deal with, or even avoid, bone loss. Wellen’s AI chatbot helps users find resources on bone health for both osteoporosis and osteopenia.
Roughly 10 million Americans age 50 or over have osteoporosis, the most common bone disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Almost 20% of all women age 50 and over suffer from the condition, and almost twice as many have some low bone mass, if not outright osteopenia, which is a precursor to more significant bone diseases, the CDC states.
Other recent AI tools coming out include an internal program at UNC Health for care team members to access documents, as well as an AI-boosted electroencephalogram that can detect delirium in critically ill older adults.
Fierce Healthcare has been providing a rolling list of AI tools coming out within the healthcare sector.
While the range of utilities for generative AI is impressive, the ongoing problem of where AI pulls its information from means that providers should adopt these tools with as much caution as credulity, McKnight’s Vice President John O’Connor has warned.
