The past few years have witnessed an increased pace of digital adoption in healthcare. Increasing competitiveness and the consumerization of healthcare have been key factors. As the health tech space matured and adoption increased, the industry started looking at tech solutions to improve operational and productivity efficiencies that had a broader impact on the healthcare spectrum and tangibly impacted patient outcomes and how they experienced healthcare. Today, Generative AI is the new technology on the block that is showing potential to radically transform healthcare. Given its potential, Generative AI in the healthcare market is expected to reach a valuation of USD 17.2 Bn by 2032. This adoption is driven by the fact that Generative AI stands uniquely positioned to help solve some pressing challenges faced by healthcare.

Generative AI in Healthcare

The healthcare industry is inundated with astronomical volumes of data; most of which is unstructured and hence, has not been able to deliver its transformational value. For Generative AI, this whole data universe is a gold mine and where it works its magic. Some of the factors that are impacting and driving the growth of generative AI are also some of its key use cases. The challenges in the healthcare industry have somehow created the perfect storm of generative AI and are becoming its key use cases.

Growing Volume of Data

Research shows that healthcare data will exceed 10 trillion gigabytes by 2025. Generative AI is well-positioned to leverage the humongous data explosion that is taking place in the healthcare industry. Generative AI uses deep learning techniques to learn from large amounts of data and generate new content similar to the input data and get it to provide deep insights to drive transformational outcomes. The power to generate synthetic data that adheres to specific characteristics and constraints has immense potential to further medical research and patient care, facilitate drug discovery, and manage resource constraints.

Manage Healthcare Worker Shortage

WHO data predicts a shortfall of 15 million healthcare workers by 2030. This shortage is one of the most recognized obstacles in the delivery of effective health services. Generative AI potential to deliver significant gains in healthcare by enabling doctors and researchers to significantly improve healthcare by enhancing patient care, reducing administrative load through intelligent automation, reducing costs, and increasing operational efficiency through its applications. Researchers can leverage the power of machine learning and advanced algorithms to explore infinite combinations of chemical molecules and uncover potential drug candidates much faster and with fewer human resources. Generative AI can enhance the precision and efficiency of medical imaging, such as CT and MRI scans using machine learning. Workflows built with Generative AI are tailored for complex, interconnected healthcare workflows and can deliver meaningful value. It can leverage the data to enable early detection of diseases, optimize treatment plans, automate routine tasks with intelligence, predict patient outcomes, and help the healthcare workforce optimize their efficiencies for effective delivery of healthcare services.

Improve Clinical Decision-Making and Patient Interaction

Generative AI’s potential is becoming increasingly evident in improving clinical decision-making and patient interaction. A recent JAMA Internal Medicine study showed how generative-powered chatbots could help reduce clinicians’ burnout and elevate patient outcomes. Generative AI can extract insights from provider-patient conversations, and post-visit summaries for patients, and automatically update records using technologies such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). That apart, it can even assist surgeons in making better decisions by revealing structures and functions not visible to the naked eye, offering real-time intelligence and visualization, and bringing together human judgment and technology.

Drug Discovery and Research

Generative AI has the potential to aid drug discovery and drive the biopharma industry. The technology can dramatically reduce new drug and therapy development cycle times.

Generative AI allows the use of large language models that can be trained on sequences and used to predict molecular interactions, improve disease target identification, and even expedite the discovery and design of novel preclinical drug candidates.

Ease Regulatory Compliance

Along with data and technology proliferation and increasing healthcare digital transformation, the healthcare industry is also tackling the burden of managing a constantly evolving regulatory landscape. With the skills shortage plaguing the healthcare sector as in every other industry, Generative AI provides opportunities to ease the burden of regulatory compliance. Generative AI automates tasks such as document generation and monitoring, reducing the time and effort required for compliance management. NLP and OCR technologies make document management, maintenance, and tracking easier. It improves the accuracy and consistency of compliance-related documents and procedures and minimizes errors and discrepancies. The capacity to continuously monitor data and transactions and examine past data assists organizations in predicting compliance and regulatory risks faster. Language translation and localization help healthcare players maintain consistent compliance practices across linguistic and geographic boundaries. Generative AI can also provide real-time alerts for potential compliance violations and enable swift corrective actions apart from providing robust audit support.

Insurance and Claims

Generative AI can streamline and improve the insurance and claims process by reducing the average time to process claims. Generative AI-enabled technology can convert unstructured data into structured data, provide accurate calculation of out-of-pocket costs, and improve claim resolution. Insurance providers can plan product features and networks, generate standard communications, and drive personalization in patient interactions. Generative AI models can also consolidate denial codes, highlight denial reasons, contextualize, and provide the next steps for denial management, and speed up the overall claims process.

Hospital Management and Patient Experience

Generative AI allows hospitals and healthcare providers to automate core administrative tasks intelligently and removes the need to sift through logs and data. Generative AI technologies summarize all the data in this area regardless of the volume and allow the workforce to concentrate on addressing complex human needs instead of focusing on administrative tasks. Backoffice, finance and accounting, inventory, and staffing functions can be improved using Generative AI through automation. It helps hospitals and healthcare facilities reduce time and money spent on hospital administrative costs such as filling patient information, post-visit notes, etc. Technologies such as NLP, OCR, machine learning, etc. can help physicians improve patient care. These technologies allow physicians to generate discharge summaries or instructions in native languages, synthesize care coordination notes, create checklists and lab summaries from physician rounds, and also improve EHRs workflows. Process improvements and increased efficiencies help remove administrative burdens on healthcare workers, prevent burnout, translate to better patient outcomes, and influence positive patient experiences.

The potential of Generative AI is alleviating challenges in healthcare and helping healthcare institutions increase operational efficiencies, deliver better patient care and engagement, reduce costs, improve diagnostics, define personalized healthcare plans, and refine population health management. Healthcare leaders, however, have to first identify how the technology best serves them and use it to bring greater value to healthcare departments, divisions, and functions. Identifying ways to improve data fidelity, assessing their current AI technology stack to evaluate whether technology capabilities need to be augmented, and ensuring that data is processed within secure firewalls are areas to pay close attention to. Generative AI has the potential to reimagine much of the healthcare industry in ways never experienced before. As the technology matures, it will converge with other tech like AR, VR, and other forms of AI and transform healthcare delivery.

Views expressed by Anurag Sinha, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Wissen Technology

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