Dec. 4 (UPI) — Artificial intelligence can improve the effectiveness and affordability of how healthcare is delivered, attendees at the 2024 Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York City were told Wednesday.
Ajay Shah, Cytovale co-founder and chief executive officer, said artificial intelligence tools are helping patients stay healthier while caregivers are lowering their healthcare delivery costs.
Cytovale is the maker of the IntelliSep AI tool that specifically diagnosis sepsis that it says is common, costly and difficult to diagnose.
“The conversation is really about the clinical operation and financial benefits to hospitals and healthcare systems,” Shah said when asked about the healthcare benefits of AI tools, like IntelliSep.
“Some of what we’ve been able to share over the last year is demonstrating a reduction in length of stay by over a day for every patient tested with IntelliSep,” Shah said.
“That’s the result of enabling the physician and the providers to see the right diagnosis from the first minute of that patient’s visit and dramatically changing their care pathways,” he added.
“The long-term effects of sepsis are really meaningful,” Shah said. “Getting patients aggressive care quickly improves the outcome of their long-term costs.”
The healthcare summit is an annual event sponsored by Forbes and includes leaders in the nation’s $4 trillion healthcare industry.
AI “is a powerful and disruptive area of computer science, with the potential to fundamentally transform the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare,” the National Institutes of Health reported in 2021.
AI can help healthcare systems around the world to achieve the four-part goal of improving population health, patients’ care, caregivers’ experiences and lowering the cost of healthcare delivery.
“Aging populations, growing burden of chronic diseases and rising costs of healthcare globally are challenging governments, payers, regulators and providers to innovate and transform models of healthcare deliver,” the NIH said.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated shortfalls in the available healthcare workforce and inequities in accessing care that the NIH says AI could help alleviate.
“The application of technology and artificial intelligence in healthcare has the potential to address some of these supply-and-demand challenges,” the NIH said.
President Joe Biden agrees and last year issued an executive order requiring the federal government to “prioritize generative AI and other critical and emerging technologies” to accelerate their responsible use in the nation’s healthcare systems and other industries.
“AI holds extraordinary potential for both promise and peril,” Biden said in the executive order.
“Responsible AI use has the potential to help solve urgent challenges while making our world more prosperous, productive, innovative and secure,” Biden said. “At the same time, irresponsible use could exacerbate societal harms.”
He said, “harnessing AI for good and realizing its myriad benefits requires mitigating its substantial risks.”
Mitigating the risks requires a “society-wide effort that includes government, the private sector, academia and civil society,”Biden said.
The Healthcare Summit fits within the context of Biden’s executive order.
“The AI revolution is unleashing new ways to discover drugs, personalize medicine and even manage a doctor’s paperwork,” Healthcare Summit organizers said.
The invitation-only annual event at Murphy Alumni Hall, NYU Langone Health, is the 13th that Forbes has held.
