AI Just Took Your Nurse's Job — Kinda
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Are you ready to get your medical advice from a nurse powered by artificial intelligence (AI)? This is already reality in some healthcare systems.
I know what you might be thinking: Could AI eventually replace actual nurses and healthcare professionals on advice lines? What about all the potential bad advice and mistakes?
I have the same thoughts. Let's discuss.
From Help Lines to Holograms: AI Nurses Are Already Here
There are some AI tools out there that have nursing unions concerned. I read about one company, Hippocratic AI, which uses clinician-vetted AI chatbots to talk to people about preoperative care, discharge instructions, chronic illness management, and more.
Now, we already have automated patient messaging, sending people information about procedures, discharge instructions with necessary links, and all that. Imagine if you had these tools and you combine it with language learning models such as ChatGPT and a visual, lifelike AI character.
This is the case with the company Xoltar, which has AI characters that can speak in different languages and, dare I say, can develop a personalized AI-patient relationship. These chatbots on Xoltar are fully customizable and, according to the company, can offer an engaging, hand-holding experience that can help patients with accountability and influence behavior. I even did a demo and I talked to Carlos, the AI chatbot, all in Spanish, and it was engaging.
The RFK Jr Claim: Can AI Diagnose Like a Doctor?
These companies have received millions of dollars in venture capital funding and have high-powered partnerships with companies such as Nvidia. And it seems that progress is only growing.
Even politicians have gotten involved. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, recently said, 'Cincinnati has developed an AI nurse that you cannot distinguish from a human being that has diagnosed as good as any doctor.'
Okay, hold on. Getting a proper diagnosis requires building trust, empathy, and complex thought, and machines are only as good as the information that they're given. I'm not really sure I agree with RFK Jr on this.
Also, I don't know what AI nurse he's speaking of. Mercy Health in Cincinnati does have an AI assistant named Catherine who helps patients navigate knee, shoulder, and hip pain. Perhaps Catherine could free up nurses and medical assistants from all those phone calls so they could then focus on patient care.
The Cost Equation: $9 AI vs $40 Human Nurse
Hippocratic AI, in partnership with Nvidia, recently released company data showing that its chatbot AI outperformed nurses in identifying toxic dosages of medications, how medications impact lab values, and other tasks. It also highlighted that its chatbot costs $9 an hour compared with the average nursing salary of around $35-$40 an hour.
Now, the reality is that somewhere some struggling healthcare system may be tempted to pay a lower cost, streamline, and hire fewer actual nurses.
Red Flags From the Frontlines: What Nurses Are Saying
This is just one of the reasons of why nursing unions have organized and spoke out against the rapid expansion of generative AI without thoughtful input from patients and healthcare professionals, and without regulations.
Some nurses have raised the valid criticism about false positives or alarms raised by AI tools that don't understand clinical context. We already see this.
For example, we see this with sepsis prediction tools. They may flag a patient who has a fever that we already know about and we're already treating, or another patient with tachycardia that's related to a medication side effect or pain. Mistakes and a lack of liability are valid concerns when it comes to AI tools.
AI as Scribe, Scheduler, and Burnout Buster — Maybe
AI tools could do incredible things for our workflow if it helped us with tasks such as paperwork, inputting data into emergency medical record, dictating patient notes, and so much more. Doing things that we don't really want to do. For example, one company, QVentus, uses AI to hyperanalyze hospital operations and assist in areas such as scheduling.
There are at least 60 companies using AI to essentially be scribes and help transcribe patient information. One study from Mass General found a 40% reduction in physician burnout during a 6-week pilot of one of these tools, but there was no financial benefit. I guess if we become more efficient at seeing patients thanks to AI tools, shareholders are going to be like, Why don't you see more patients? That means we're going to have to address time-based coding to make all these tools actually make sense and be profitable.
A Healthcare Shortcut or a Sci-Fi Gamble?
I digress. The growing question is whether generative AI can eventually fill in for nurses and other healthcare professionals. I mean, no one is denying that we have a healthcare professional shortage, especially in rural areas, but are chatbots and AI nurses really the solution? I feel like we're setting patients up for a science fiction experiment that is evolving faster than any of us can imagine.
What are your thoughts? I want to hear from you. I know you've got something to say, so comment below.
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