Mary Hardcastle at RapidAI looks at the advancements in health tech, explaining what hospitals need to do to implement Artificial Intelligence in the ER
Despite incredible advancements in health technology over the last decade, many hospitals had remained hesitant to make meaningful changes to the way their emergency departments operated — until COVID-19 shed new light on the inefficiencies and pain points that have long plagued the process and exposed the inability of legacy systems to deal with major operational challenges at a time when the stakes for triaging emergency departments for patients with emergency conditions became even higher.
In a recent survey of senior healthcare executives, 98% say their organisation has or is planning to implement an AI strategy. As hospitals around the world emerge from the pandemic and reconsider new solutions to solve age-old problems with workflow, here are five considerations for vetting and implementing new technology to achieve the full clinical, operational, and financial benefits AI can deliver.
Technology doesn’t need to be complex to be valuable
In many cases intuitiveness and usability is directly correlated to a technology’s value. Evaluate technology for both promise, but also sensibility. New tools should unquestionably alleviate physician burnout, rather than contribute to it. For example, the RapidAI advanced imaging and workflow technology allows physicians to view CT images anywhere at any time from their mobile devices, giving them greater flexibility and improving the speed of patient care.
Keep interoperability & transparency top of mind
Interoperability is closely connected to value, by saving time, reducing redundancies, and supporting more actionable data. However, it’s not only crucial for solutions to integrate with your current technologies and processes, but also those you may consider for the future. Ultimately the more integrated and interoperable a solution, the more scalable it is.
Transparency is another major factor to consider when reviewing new technologies. Increasingly we are seeing more attention paid to the data and algorithms driving our healthcare systems, as it relates to privacy, biases, accuracy, and more. By doing your due-diligence and digging deeper during the vetting process, you will be better positioned to ultimately deliver the most equitable and ethical patient care.
Data is a critical component for measuring impact
Choose tools that give you strong and plentiful data on usage, efficiency, and outcomes to ensure you know how it’s working, yielding ROI, and identifying where your team and technology can improve. Valuable analytics solutions such as Insights provides automated reports and data to help hospitals and multi-site systems standardize patient care processes and protocols, make better financial decisions, and achieve operational excellence.
The key to unlocking technology’s maximum potential? Effective training & support
A big part of maximising the full potential of clinical technology is having effective training for those using it day-in and day-out. Look for companies that provide comprehensive training opportunities, and end-to-end support in order to implement, adopt, learn and use the platform with confidence and ease.
Look beyond the surface to clinical validation
The best technologies will likely attract the best minds, so consider the medical experts involved in the product’s development, look to key opinion leaders you trust, and expect clinical validation throughout the process. As you consider new technologies, bring key stakeholders into the process, including the physicians, nurses, and support staff, to determine whether the new technology is the right fit or not.
Please note: This is a commercial profile
© 2019. This work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND.
