Before the pandemic, virtual care and online patient communication were slowly growing but were not used much in many medical offices.
Since early 2020, there has been a big rise in the need for telehealth and digital communication.
Primary care doctors have seen three to four times more patient messages through electronic portals like MyChart.
This shows more people want remote access to medical advice and help coordinating their care.<\/p>\n
This sharp rise in patient messages has made things harder for healthcare providers.
Doctors and their staff get many patient questions, requests to refill prescriptions, questions about test results, and other concerns that need quick answers.
It is now a big challenge to respond quickly without lowering the quality of care.
This is especially true for offices that already have staff shortages and more patients to see.<\/p>\n
UC San Diego Health, a large academic medical center, is one of the first places to try using AI in patient communication.
They have started a pilot program where GPT-4, an AI language model by OpenAI, is used in their MyChart patient messaging system.
They call this “Dr. Chatbot.”
It helps doctors by writing draft replies to patient messages.
Doctors then review and personalize these replies before sending them.<\/p>\n
Dr. Christopher A. Longhurst, Chief Medical Officer at UC San Diego Health, said this system keeps a human involved to make sure patients are safe.
Doctors check each message to avoid mistakes or wrong information that the AI might create if used alone.<\/p>\n
Because patient messages grew so much, the AI-assisted messaging system is helpful for doctors.
Early reports show that licensed healthcare providers liked AI-generated responses 79% of the time.
Doctors said these AI replies were better in quality and showed more care than some messages written by people.<\/p>\n
This is important because being kind and having the right tone is very important in patient communication.
It affects how happy patients are and if they follow medical advice.
The system helps doctors by making long answers that are clear, short, and kind.
This helps give quick replies while still showing patients they are cared for.<\/p>\n
Using AI in healthcare communication brings up many ethical questions.
At UC San Diego Health, AI messages have labels that say they were created by AI and checked by a doctor.
This helps keep things clear for patients and builds trust.
It also stops patients from getting wrong or cold information without a real doctor reviewing it.<\/p>\n
Dr. Longhurst stressed that AI must be used carefully because healthcare decisions are very important.
Doctors are still responsible for the care patients get.
AI is a tool to help them work faster and be more accurate.
Doctors still make the final decisions.<\/p>\n
The pilot program\u2019s early success is starting ideas about how to use AI more in health systems.
UC San Diego Health thinks AI can help with tasks like:<\/p>\n
These uses might lower paperwork for doctors.
That way, doctors can spend more time with patients and making medical decisions.
Because healthcare money is often limited and there are fewer clinical workers, AI might help make care more effective and easier to manage in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Medical practice managers and IT staff will find it useful to know how AI and workflow automation can improve front-office tasks and patient contact.
For example, Simbo AI is a company that uses AI to handle front-office phone calls.
Their system can do appointment scheduling, reminders, prescription refill requests, and basic patient questions without a human answering the phone.<\/p>\n
These automated phone systems can reduce the burden on staff by taking care of repeated, time-consuming calls.
They lower mistakes from manual work.
AI systems learn how to understand patient needs and answer properly or send harder questions to human workers when needed.
This mix of AI and human help keeps patients happy while making staff more productive.<\/p>\n
Using AI in phone systems fits well with the trend to virtual care.
It moves many contacts online or to automated channels.
This helps handle many calls that would otherwise stress small administrative teams.
Healthcare groups can better manage their staff.<\/p>\n
Putting AI chatbots like GPT-4 with phone automation from companies like Simbo AI creates a full communication system.
It gives patients faster replies and easier service access.
This meets the usual expectation today, where many services use automated digital help.<\/p>\n
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