HIMSS23 themes include ChatGPT, digital innovation

HIMSS23 themes include ChatGPT, digital innovation unknown

Talk of the potential uses of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics in clinical and administrative settings dominated conversations at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference this week.

Around 35,000 people attended the 2023 conference in Chicago, where panel topics ranged from the role of technology in safety and health equity, to patient data systems and digital capabilities in wide-ranging care settings.

Here are five main industry trends that were explored at the conference.

1. Excitement around ChatGPT.

Conference floors were filled with buzzy booths pedaling generative AI solutions ranging from communication to revenue cycle.

Many providers are allured at the idea of technology solutions’ ability to improve margins.

A number of large companies including Google and Epic’s partnership with Microsoft illustrate the continued interest.

“AI is a big part of what we believe is the future,” said David Rhew, Microsoft's global chief medical officer and vice president for healthcare. “Across the board, it's a really exciting opportunity for us to be able to think about how these technologies are going to change the practice and improve healthcare.”

Still it remains unclear whether the announcements are ready for prime time. Experts said regulation appears to be on the horizon and the clinical applications are still coming into focus.

“Some of the technology is going to get throttled,” said Dr. Patrick McGill, chief transformation officer at Indianapolis-based health system Community Health Network. “We can do a lot of things with AI and Chat-[GPT] and everything else, but how long is it going to take the medical legal environment to catch up?”

2. Skepticism of generative AI.

While the industry is alight with excitement about the possibilities with generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, many experts are urging healthcare systems to pump the brakes on their experimenting in this space.

In a Tuesday keynote on the ethical considerations of AI, panelists discussed the downsides of black box models, perpetuated biases and the potential for consumers to view generative AI as an entity capable of human-like reasoning and understanding.

“Don’t get blinded by ChatGPT and these exciting new things,” said Kay Firth-Butterfield, CEO of the Centre for Trustworthy Technology. “There are uses of AI that are proven and great for you to be using now.”

Firth-Butterfield and other panelists emphasized the need for governance and multi-specialty stakeholder teams overseeing the deployment and testing of AI to assess risks across the care continuum.

Some, like Dr. Taft Parsons III, vice president and chief psychiatric officer at CVS Health, are waiting for significant improvements in AI-driven solutions to guarantee patient safety.

“Looking at the types of recommendations I get, [the AI] is either too broad and general to be clinically useful or it’s flat out inaccurate,” Parsons said.

3. Letting technology take a backseat to quality.

Even though the conference centered around innovations in the digital space, there was still an acknowledgement that clinical processes always need to come first.

“One of the challenges that we face in creating satisfying practices is having technology not get in the way of patient care and having technology support the efficiency of practice,” said Andrea Walsh, president and CEO of HealthPartners, an integrated provider and insurance non-profit organization in Bloomington, Minnesota.

In its work with hospital-at-home programs, Best Buy is focusing on making its technology blend seamlessly into the background of patient-provider interactions and support, said president Deborah DiSanzo.

DiSanzo and others expressed the importance of human-centered design that addresses the needs of clinicians and patients and is not driven by a myriad of virtual point solutions.

4. Using ‘smart’ devices to augment care.

Both Amazon and Verizon announced their forays into the ‘smart’ hospital space, with each hoping to be a pioneer in the designs of future healthcare facilities.

Using Amazon’s AI-enabled voice assistant Alexa, patients and care teams will be able to conduct calls between Echo devices and non-Echo devices in hospital rooms, nursing stations and provider workstations.

The retailer said it is deploying some of its new Alexa Smart Properties updates to health system BayCare’s flagship Wesley Chapel hospital in Wesley Chapel, Florida.

In July, Verizon and Cleveland Clinic are launching the country’s first 'smart' hospital with a 5G network.

The facility will feature a number of innovations including check-in kiosks, digital displays, hospital resource tracking and virtual reality adoption, said Matt Kull, chief information officer at Cleveland Clinic

“If we’re successful here, all facilities will be built with this type of infrastructure,” Kull said. “We think that this is going to become not the exception but the norm for healthcare.”

5. The importance of an immediate ROI.

The overwhelming message from providers was the importance of vendor value.

“The financial pressures have given a lot of focus on immediate returns,” said Brad Reimer, chief information officer at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health. “We’re not just focusing on back-office scale efficiency. There has to be real value for the patient.”

Macroeconomic pressures and depressed operating margins thanks to rising wages have largely shifted health systems’ strategy in implementing digital health solutions. Many vendors have noticed the slowdown and priority shift.

“Irrespective of the macroeconomic environment we always have this idea [asking] ‘what is the immediate value we get from this solution,” said Amit Khanna, Salesforce’s senior vice president and general manager of healthcare and life sciences. “We have seen, in general, the macroeconomic trends that are impacting every one of us.”

Vendors say understanding the problems facing providers are important.

“It is [a harder conversation] if you start in the IT department,” said Gregg Church, president of data management software vendor 4medica. “You’ve got to sell heavier on the value story.”

Many providers and vendors said shorter contracts, limited partnerships and less ticky relationships would be common.