Visitors test Nvidia's artificial intelligence technology at the Apsara 2024 Conference in Hangzhou, China, on September 19, 2024.
Costofoto | Nurfoto | fake images
NVIDIA, Google, microsoft and dozens of other tech companies are coming to Las Vegas next week to showcase artificial intelligence tools they say will save doctors and nurses valuable time.
Sunday marks the official start of a health technology conference called HLTH, which is expected to attract more than 12,000 industry leaders this year. CNBC will be on the ground. According to the conference agenda and pre-conference announcements, artificial intelligence tools to overcome administrative burdens will be the star of this year's show.
Doctors and nurses are responsible for mountains of documentation as they work to keep up with patient records, interact with insurance companies, and comply with regulators. These tasks are often painstakingly manual, in part because health data is siled and stored in multiple providers and formats.
The huge administrative workload is a leading cause of burnout in the industry, and is part of the reason there is an expected nationwide shortage of 100,000 healthcare workers by 2028, according to consulting firm Mercer. Tech companies, eager to get a piece of a market that could surpass $6.8 trillion in spending by the end of the decade, argue that their generative artificial intelligence tools can help.
Alex Schiffhauer, Google group product manager, speaks during the Made By Google event at the company's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, on August 13, 2024.
Josh Edelson | AFP | fake images
Google, for example, said it is working to expand its healthcare customer base by addressing administrative burden with AI.
On Thursday, the company announced the general availability of Vertex AI Search for Healthcare, which it introduced on a trial basis during HLTH last year. Vertex AI Search for Healthcare allows developers to create tools to help doctors quickly search for information in disparate medical records, Google said. New features are also now available within Google's Healthcare Data Engine, which helps organizations build the platforms they need to support generative AI, the company said.
Google on Thursday released the results of a survey that said doctors spend nearly 28 hours a week on administrative tasks. In the survey, 80% of providers said this administrative work takes away from their time with patients, and 91% said they feel positive about using AI to streamline these tasks.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a company event on artificial intelligence technologies in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.
Dimas Ardián | Bloomberg | fake images
Similarly, Microsoft on October 11 announced its collection of tools aimed at reducing the administrative workload of doctors, including medical image models, a healthcare agent service and an automated documentation solution for nurses, most of which are still in the early stages of development. development.
Microsoft already offers an automated documentation tool for doctors through its subsidiary, Nuance Communications, which it acquired in a $16 billion deal in 2021. The tool, called DAX Copilot, uses artificial intelligence to transcribe doctors' visits to patients and convert them into clinical notes and summaries. Ideally, this means that doctors do not have to spend time writing these notes themselves.
Nurses and doctors complete different types of documentation during their shifts, so Microsoft said it is creating a separate tool for nurses that better fits their workflows.
AI writing tools like DAX Copilot have surged in popularity this year, and Nuance competitors such as Abridge, which has reportedly raised more than $460 million, and Suki, which has raised $165 million, will also be in the mix. HLTH conference.
Dr. Shiv Rao, founder and CEO of Abridge, told CNBC in March that the pace at which the healthcare industry has adopted this new form of clinical documentation seems “historic.” Abridge received a coveted investment from Nvidia's venture capital division that same month.
Nvidia is also preparing to address the workload of doctors and nurses at HLTH.
Kimberly Powell, the company's vice president of healthcare, will give a keynote speech Monday explaining how using generative AI will help healthcare professionals “spend more time on patient care,” according to the company's website. the conference.
Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs, are used to create and deploy the models that power OpenAI's ChatGPT and similar applications. As a result, Nvidia has been a major beneficiary of the AI boom. Nvidia stock is up more than 150% so far this year and tripled in the past year.
The company has been steadily making inroads into the healthcare sector in recent years and offers a range of artificial intelligence tools in medical devices, drug discovery, genomics and medical imaging. Nvidia also announced expanded partnerships with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and GE Health Care in March.
While the healthcare industry has historically been slow to adopt new technologies, the buzz around AI administrative tools has been undeniable since ChatGPT burst onto the scene two years ago.
Still, many health systems are still in the early stages of evaluating tools and vendors, and will be touring the HLTH show floor. Tech companies will have to demonstrate that they have the ability to address one of the most complex problems in healthcare.
