Healthcare organizations are already seeing positive outcomes thanks to this technology, according to a recent survey from Deloitte US Center for Health Solutions, which asked 121 C-suite executives from health care organizations across Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States in August and September 2024 their feelings regarding the outlook for global healthcare in 2025.
More than 70% of those respondents said that they expect their organizations’ productivity to increase in the coming year, and among those trends that they believe will increase thar productivity is digital transformation, with 90% saying this will be a significant trend. However, the impact of that appears to apply more for those outside the United States: 52% of the 81 non-U.S.-based respondents surveyed said digital transformation could have a significant impact on their organizational strategies, compared with just 30% of the 41 respondents based in the U.S.
The other major trends include the adoption of virtual health, digital tools, and connected delivery care, cited by 88%, as well as the proliferation of generative AI, cited by 81%; most surveyed health system executives said their organizations are developing use cases or planning to explore generative AI over the next 12 months.
Autonomous gen AI agents, aka “agentic AI,” can act independently and make decisions without human intervention, and it can be used to automate tasks that are currently done manually, such as patient referrals, appointment scheduling, confirmation calls, data entry, diagnoses, treatment plans, and post-discharge care. These algorithms can also help with analyzing CT scans, MRIs, and X-rays, which currently represent more than three-quarters of AI-based devices authorized by the FDA.
More than 40% of respondents said their organizations have already experienced a significant-to-moderate return on their investments in gen AI, while only 12% said they had a low return on investment, and the other 44% said it’s too early to know or hadn’t invested enough to say for sure.
“While gen AI has the potential to improve efficiencies and productivity, there may be a lack of trust associated with its evolving role in society, which could introduce skepticism among patients and other stakeholders. For example, if the data used to train AI models is biased or unbalanced, the information produced could be unreliable,” wrote Deloitte in its report.
“In addition, gen AI technology has been shown to ‘hallucinate’ and produce false information if it hasn’t been trained on an appropriate data set or quality checked by a human. Such blind spots are important to consider when developing a gen AI strategy.”
(Image source: psychiatryadvisor.com)