The King’s Fund report: How the emerging use of AI is assisting health and social care
The digital transformation of the NHS and social care systems is well underway but while some see huge potential others remain cautious. So what’s really happening? In this latest Health Tech Connect we turn our attention to the use of AI and how it is assisting health and social care.
Improving the quality of care
Quality of care is important to enable care that is effective and safe and provides a good experience for patients and those who draw on services. Although the NHS and integrated care boards have a duty to continually improve the quality of care, this can be a challenge when the system is under pressure. To support improvement in the quality of care, innovators and suppliers are working on a number of different AI tools that can improve speed, experience, outcomes and decision-making.
Supporting the workforce
Technology needs to work for and support staff in a well-functioning health and care system; it builds staff enthusiasm for innovation and technology while supporting them to focus on patient care. A number of AI technologies that have the potential to improve the working conditions and workload for staff in health and care are currently being developed, tested and implemented. These include AI scribes, generative AI, and other bespoke AI tools.
Improving patient empowerment, accessibility and communication
People can, and do, struggle to reach hospitals or miss appointments. A number of providers and suppliers are successfully applying AI to identify people at risk of missing appointments, then allocating staff time and resources to contacting them to reduce their specific barriers to access. AI algorithms use data such as social determinants of health, location, age and time of appointments to predict which patients are unlikely to attend an appointment.
Saving time and money
Many examples of AI have the potential to improve not just quality of care, staff workload and patient experience but also the productivity of the health and care system itself. While the productivity boost from each individual use of AI can be relatively small, the cumulative gain of multiple tools at different points of a service can enable substantial improvements – assuming released time can be redirected to care.
Supporting safety of care
More people are living longer and with long-term conditions, which means that the proportion of people needing surgical care are increasingly likely to be older, have comorbidities
and be taking multiple medications. This makes it harder to decide which medications to change and what anaesthesia to use during surgery to reduce the risk of adverse reactions
and harm. Innovators in the NHS are piloting AI tools to make this complex process more efficient and safer for patients by bringing together information scattered throughout the
system to then risk assess patients and help staff to adapt their treatment and surgery.
Read the report, ‘More than just hype: how emerging AI use is assisting health and social care’ authored by Pritesh Mistry from The King’s Fund.