Rare diseases are not common by themselves, but together they affect millions of people in the United States. It is hard to diagnose these diseases because their symptoms can look like common illnesses. Many doctors have little experience with these rare diseases. Hospital leaders and IT managers know that doctors often work with pieces of information from different places or rely on memory, not complete data. This can cause delays in diagnosis, wrong treatments, and more health costs.
Doctors also have more work and paperwork, which makes them tired and stressed. Studies show that about 40% to 60% of doctors feel burned out partly because they spend much time writing notes and talking with patients. This shows why good tools are needed to help doctors and improve patient care.
Big health data collections are very important for AI work in healthcare. One example is Epic’s Cosmos research database. Cosmos has over 270 million patient records from more than 13 billion medical visits in the U.S. It covers all states and has information about patient backgrounds, diagnoses, lab tests, treatments, and results.
Hospital leaders and IT managers must manage this data carefully to follow privacy laws like HIPAA and other rules. Even with these rules, this database helps doctors and researchers find trends that are not visible with smaller sets of data.
One AI tool made using the Cosmos database is called “Look-Alikes.” It helps doctors find groups of patients with rare diseases. It compares a patient’s symptoms and medical details with others who have similar issues. This helps make diagnoses more correct and allows doctors to start treatment early.
Look-Alikes is already used in 65 places across the United States. It works smoothly with the normal ways doctors do their work. This makes it easier to think about rare diseases without searching by hand or guessing. Hospital leaders help bring this AI tool into clinics by training staff and making sure technology works well.
Doctors often need to work together to diagnose and treat rare diseases. Sometimes specialists are in different places. AI tools that use big data let doctors share patient information and treatment ideas faster. For example, Epic’s “Best Care Choices for My Patient” looks at treatment results from patients like theirs. It helps doctors pick better treatments based on facts, not just experience.
Places like NYU Langone Health and Parkview Health are trying out this tool to make treatments more steady and useful. Medical practice owners and hospital leaders find that these AI tools can help patients get better results, lower chances of going back to the hospital, and use resources better by reducing trial and error.
Using AI in daily doctor work helps not only with finding rare diseases but also with cutting down doctors’ heavy workloads. Epic’s MyChart in-basket augmented response technology (ART) writes quick answers to patient messages automatically, saving doctors about 30 seconds on each message. This small time save adds up a lot when there are many patients. It helps doctors work better and feel less tired.
Other AI tools use voice technology to record doctor visits and make notes automatically in the patient’s electronic record. These tools are being used in 186 places. Doctors say this helps them focus more on patients instead of paperwork. Some say this technology helps keep their work and personal life balanced and keeps them from quitting their jobs.
These AI tools matter a lot to hospital leaders and IT managers. They must keep enough staff, avoid doctor burnout, and keep good patient care. Using AI for communication and documents can reduce work without lowering safety or data rules.
One important area where AI helps is the relationship between hospitals and insurers. Problems like denial of claims, waiting for approvals, and hard billing codes slow down patient care and add to the work of medical groups. Epic’s payer platform links half of U.S. health systems to big insurers such as Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It automates approvals and claim processes.
This system helps hospital leaders and practice managers manage money more smoothly and cuts costs caused by denied claims. The AI makes communication faster between payers and providers so patients get the treatments they need sooner, including those with rare diseases.
For patients with complex health needs, clear communication is very important. Epic is working on AI tools that make reports and bills easier to understand. These tools explain medical and financial information in simple words. This helps reduce confusion and builds trust between patients and doctors. For people with chronic and rare diseases, this clear communication aids in sticking to their care plans.
Hospitals and clinics often hesitate to use AI because of worries about cost and following rules. Epic has worked to lower costs by cutting AI expenses by 50% in the last year. This makes AI more affordable for healthcare places of all sizes.
Epic has also shared an AI validation software that health systems can use to check how well their AI tools work. This helps hospital leaders and IT managers follow regulations, avoid unfair bias, and keep patients safe.
Medical practice owners and administrators in the U.S. need to understand how AI works and what it affects. Putting AI and big data into healthcare needs good planning, spending on IT, training workers, and ongoing checks. Leaders must work with doctors, IT staff, and vendors to add AI in a way that improves patient care and workflow without causing problems.
Tools like rare disease patient finding, decision support, and workflow automation show clear benefits. Administrators are responsible for choosing the right technology, fitting it with their goals, and checking how it affects patients and staff.
In summary, using AI with large health databases like Epic’s Cosmos creates new ways to find and manage rare diseases in the U.S. These tools help doctors, lower paperwork, and support teamwork among healthcare workers. For hospital leaders and IT managers, these AI tools improve diagnosis, treatment, and running medical offices and hospitals better nationwide.
Epic aims to reduce clinician documentation burden, streamline charting and coding, and deliver evidence-based medical insights directly at the point of care to improve clinical workflows and patient outcomes.
ART automatically drafts responses to patient messages, saving clinicians about half a minute per message, generating empathy in communication, and improving patient satisfaction by providing timely, human-like responses.
AI-powered charting captures patient encounters via ambient voice technology, producing notes instantly, thereby reducing documentation time, alleviating clinician burnout, improving work-life balance, and helping retain clinicians in practice.
Epic is working on over 100 AI capabilities including auto-adverse drug reaction tagging, patient-friendly report summaries, billing coding assistance, explain-my-bill agents, automatic order and diagnosis queues, and automatic specialty form population.
This AI tool analyzes treatment outcomes from similar patient profiles to recommend evidence-based therapies, helping clinicians select optimized treatments, potentially improving adherence to evidence-based medicine which is currently low.
Cosmos, with 270 million patient records, supports tools like ‘Look-Alikes’ that identify patients with similar rare diseases and enable physician collaboration, enhancing diagnosis and treatment for complex cases.
Epic collaborates with Microsoft to optimize AI compute costs (cut in half since last year) and offers an open-source AI validation tool for health systems to test and monitor AI models, supporting compliance and affordability.
Epic’s payer platform automates prior authorizations, reduces denials, improves care access speed, and decreases workload for both providers and insurers by streamlining data access and authorization processes.
Epic is developing AI-generated patient-friendly report summaries and ‘explain my bill’ agents that translate complex medical information and billing details into easily understandable language to enhance patient engagement and transparency.
Epic’s Aura platform integrates genetic testing and medical device data, including wearable health monitors, directly into clinical workflows, simplifying access to critical diagnostics and enabling faster diagnosis and intervention.
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