The World Health Organization estimates that by 2030, the world will face a shortage of approximately 10 million healthcare workers globally if health systems do not make significant changes. This looming crisis threatens to leave millions without accessible, quality care, potentially leading to devastating consequences for individuals and communities worldwide. Luckily, AI tools are providing innovative solutions to this issue in a variety of ways that can alleviate the administrative burden on healthcare professionals, expand access to care, and ultimately promote greater health equity across the globe. Healthcare should not be seen as a privilege to some; it is a right for all, and AI solutions can instill that right worldwide.
To help increase access to care for anyone, we have gathered four of the most important waves that are currently helping to change access to care for everyone, augmented by the latest trends in generative artificial intelligence.
AI Uses in Telehealth & Virtual Care
An estimated 22.2 million residents in rural U.S. communities live in areas with a shortage of healthcare providers, meaning telehealth is a critical tool for delivering life-saving care across the world. Millions of citizens saw these benefits take shape for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic when telehealth companies gave global citizens access to necessary, life-saving care remotely.
Through AI-powered agents and copilots, remote healthcare has also seen increased efficiency and support with tools like basic medical advice and improved triage flow for emergency responders who provide medical guidance to patients remotely.
AI-Powered Assistants” to Improve Decision Accuracy
As with any AI application in healthcare, the hope is to enhance provider decision-making, not replace it. When AI is trained on medical information and has comprehensive safety features, it can empower nurses and doctors with the knowledge of millions of fellow healthcare professionals whose data trained the AI system in use. The AI can thereby serve as a “gut check” for healthcare providers, giving each provider the mandate needed to make decisions faster, enhancing patient trust and engagement, as they are equipped with the most comprehensive, in-depth information available, ensuring that even patients in less-developed healthcare systems can benefit from the newest and most advanced research and knowledge.
For certain health groups, this could mean the difference between life and death. In high-stress situations, small symptoms might go unnoticed or undetected, especially by new practitioners who have not been privy to a given complication before. AI has the potential to notice these subtle symptoms, augmenting a healthcare professional’s knowledge and providing a more thorough analysis of potential diagnoses. Meningitis, for example, is commonly mistaken for influenza, but AI could help identify the key differences in symptom patterns, ensuring a more accurate and timely diagnosis that leads to better outcomes.
Resource Allocation & Administrative Support
In areas with limited healthcare infrastructure, AI can help optimize the distribution of resources, such as medication, medical staff, and hospital beds. More than many other industries, doctors and nurses bear a heavy burden when it comes to administrative work, between compiling patient medical histories, filing medication dosages, and inputting symptoms into charts. Some studies have found that doctors can spend up to 34% of their time doing administration. When these administrative tasks add up, the result is less availability of doctors and reduced openings for patients in locations where healthcare facilities are sparse.
By implementing AI-assisted copilots for quality assurance, note-taking, journaling, documenting and coding, doctors can free up more of their time and energy to spend focusing on patients – which, as research has shown, can lead to better relationships and more in-depth conversations, giving doctors a more holistic view of their patients health and lead to better diagnoses.
Language and Culture Barriers
One of the largest challenges remains the language and cultural barriers that can potentially lead to misinterpretation and error. In these situations, AI-powered tools can break down language and culture barriers through automatic, real-time translation capabilities. As a result, this ensures that patients from a diverse set of backgrounds have access to the critical information they need, regardless of who their doctor is or what language they speak. Similarly, AI can reduce unconscious bias in the healthcare industry by training medical algorithms to ensure equitable decision-making, improving access and outcomes for historically marginalized groups and improving health equity.
Everyone deserves access to the best possible healthcare, but the high cost of traditional solutions can exacerbate disparities across the globe. AI serves as a powerful solution to this, bridging the gap by making technology more affordable and accessible to all healthcare providers. By democratizing access to world-class healthcare, AI has the potential to revolutionize the industry and ensure that its benefits are not limited to a privileged few. As AI continues to advance, its role in promoting healthcare equity will only grow, ultimately leading to a future where quality healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
Expanding access to care is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but health systems should arm themselves with technology that can deliver the best options. AI is a simple and cost-effective method that will relieve overburdened healthcare systems, clearing the path for billions of patients around the world to receive low-risk, high-quality care.
About Andreas Cleve
Andreas Cleve is Corti’s co-founder and CEO. After spending nearly a decade working as a multi-entrepreneur in AI, Andreas founded Corti with Lars Maaløe, pioneering a safe and effective Generative AI platform for healthcare. Corti’s AI not only takes notes but also quality assures, journals, codes, nudges, prompts, and documents every patient interaction. With significant research findings in speech processing, dialectic challenges, medical coding, and language understanding, Corti’s artificial intelligence enhances real-time consultations across the entire patient journey across the United States and Europe.