Doctors are turning medical GenAI into a booming industry

For doctors, the hottest new technology promises to bring back an age-old medical practice: face-to-face conversations with patients.

At the HIMSS conference in Orlando, Florida, where more than 30,000 health and technology professionals gathered, the hot topic on the exhibit floor was clinical documentation in the environment.

Through this technology, doctors can voluntarily record visits with patients and use artificial intelligence to automatically convert the conversations into clinical notes and summaries. Companies such as Nuance Communications, Abridge and Suki have already launched solutions with these capabilities. They believe this will help reduce administrative burdens on physicians, allowing them to focus more on building meaningful connections with patients.

Abridge founder and CEO Dr. Shiv Rao said in an interview with reporters at HIMSS: After I see the patient, I have to write notes, I have to place an order, and I have to think about the patient summary. “So our technology allows me to focus on the person in front of me — the most important person, the patient — because when I press start, talk, stop, I can turn the chair and within seconds , the notes are right there."

Clinicians in the U.S. healthcare system face a huge administrative workload, which is a major problem. According to a survey released by AthenaHealth in February, more than 90% of doctors said they often feel burned out, mainly due to the heavy paperwork they need to deal with.

A survey showed that more than 60% of doctors said they felt overburdened with paperwork and that they had to work an average of 15 extra hours per week outside of normal working hours in order to keep up with work progress.

Because administrative work is mostly bureaucratic in nature, it typically does not directly impact physicians' decisions regarding diagnosis or patient care. However, as health industry organizations gradually explore the application of GenAI, administrative work has gradually become an important area. Therefore, clinical documentation solutions in the environment have received a lot of attention. In healthcare, administrative work plays a key role in ensuring efficient functioning of the organization, allocation of resources, and implementation of policies. Through the application of GenAI technology, administrators can more intelligently analyze and utilize large amounts of clinical data. Kenneth Harper, general manager of Microsoft DAX Copilot, said in an interview with reporters: "There is no better place than this."

In March last year, Nuance, a subsidiary of Microsoft, announced the launch of the preview function of Dragon Ambient Experience (DAX) Express, an environmental clinical documentation tool. After several months of development, the solution was officially launched in September and is now called DAX Copilot. According to Harper, more than 200 organizations have begun to adopt this technology.

In 2021, Microsoft acquired Nuance for about $16 billion, and the company had a two-story booth on the show floor that was often packed with visitors.

Harper said the technology saves doctors several minutes per visit, although the exact numbers vary by specialty. He said his team receives feedback from doctors on the service almost daily, and they Claims the service helped them take better care of themselves and even saved their marriages.

Harper recounted a conversation with a doctor who was considering retiring after practicing for more than 30 years. He said the doctor was burned out from years of stress, but after being introduced to DAX Copilot, he was inspired by Inspiration to continue working.

"He said, 'I really think I'm going to practice for another 10 years because I really enjoy what I do,'" Harper said. "It was just a personal anecdote about how important this was to our What an impact the care team is having."

At HIMSS, Stanford Health Care announced it will deploy DAX Copilot across its enterprise.

Gary Fritz, director of applications at Stanford Health Care, said the organization is initially testing the tool in its exam rooms. He said that Stanford University recently surveyed doctors on their use of DAX Copilot and 96% found it easy to use.

Fritz said in an interview with reporters: "I have never seen such a big number, this is a big thing."

Dr. Christopher Sharp, chief medical information officer of Stanford Health Care, is One of the doctors who tested DAX Copilot said it was very seamless to use. The tool is accurate and powerful for its immediacy and reliability, but could use improvements in capturing the patient's tone, he said.

Sharp said he credits the tool with saving him time recording and changing the way he uses that time. For example, he says, he often reads and edits notes rather than writes them, so the work isn't completely lost.

Sharp said that in the short term, he would like to see DAX Copilot have more personalization capabilities on both a personal and professional level, and even then, he said it was easy to see its value from the start. . "When the first document comes back to you and you see your own words and the patient's own words reflected directly back to you in a useful way," Sharp said in an interview with CNBC , I would say, from that moment on, you're hooked." It's still early in the product life cycle, and Stanford Health Care is still figuring out what deployment will look like, Fritz said. He said that DAX Copilot may be launched in specialties.

In January of this year, Nuance announced the general availability of DAX Copilot within Epic Systems’ electronic health records (EHR). Most doctors use EHRs to create and manage patient records, and Epic is the largest U.S. vendor by hospital market share, according to a May report from KLAS Research.

Integrating a tool like DAX Copilot directly into a physician’s EHR workflow means they don’t need to switch applications to access it, which helps save time and even further relieve their clerks, Harper said. burden.

Seth Hain, Epic’s senior vice president of research and development, told reporters that environmental technology has drafted more than 150,000 notes in the company’s software since last year’s HIMSS conference, and that the technology is scaling rapidly expand. Hain said more banknotes have already been drafted in 2024 than in 2023.

"You can see that health systems have gone through an intentional process of adapting their end users to this type of technology and are now starting to roll it out rapidly," he said.

A company called Abridge is also integrating its ambient clinical documentation technology directly into Epic. Abridge, which declined to disclose the exact number of health organizations using its technology, announced at HIMSS that California-based UCI Health will System-wide rollout of the company's solutions.

The speed with which the healthcare industry has adopted environmental clinical documentation feels “historic,” said Rao, CEO of Abridge.

Bbridge announced a $30 million Series B funding round in October, led by Spark Capital, according to a February press release. Four months later, the company closed a $150 million Series C round of financing. Rao said tailwinds like physician burnout have turned into a tornado for Abridge, which will use the funds to continue investing in the science behind the technology and explore where it can go next.

The company saves some doctors up to three hours a day and automates more than 92% of the paperwork it focuses on, Rao said. He added that Abridge's technology spans 55 majors and 14 languages.

Abridge has a Slack channel called "Love Stories," watched by reporters, where the team will share their positive feedback about their technology. One message this week comes from a doctor who says Abridge has helped them take away their least favorite part of their job, saving them about an hour and a half every day.

Rao said: "This kind of feedback is absolutely motivating to everyone in the company."

Suki CEO Punit Soni said the surrounding clinical documentation market is "hot," and he Rapid growth is expected to continue in the coming years, but he said, like all hype cycles, he thinks the dust is settling.

Soni founded Suki more than six years ago after assuming a need for a digital assistant to help doctors manage clinical documentation. Soni said Suki is now used by more than 30 specialties in about 250 health organizations across the country. He added that six "large health systems" have come online with Suki in the past two weeks.

For four to five years, I was sitting there, basically keeping the store open and hoping someone would come. The entire mall is here now, and people who want to deploy are lined up outside the door. "Sony told reporters at HIMSS. "It's very, very exciting to be here.

Suki said its technology can reduce the time doctors spend on documentation by an average of 72%, and the company raised $55 million in funding in 2021, led by March Capital. Soni said it Another round of funding may be raised later this year.

Soni said Suki is focused on deploying its technology at scale and exploring other applications, such as how to use environmental documentation to help nurses. He said in Spanish Coming to Suki soon, customers should expect most major languages ​​to follow.

“There’s so much that has to be done,” he said, “over the next ten years, all Healthcare technologies will all look completely different. ”